At the 2020 CES two years ago, DJI's Lanwo Technology announced its entry into lidar, Bosch has just made efforts, and some market consulting companies predict that the market size in this field can reach 1.8 billion yuan in the next 5 years, and the result is that it will reach 1.8 billion yuan in 2020.
At the end of 2020, mass production passenger cars began to be equipped with lidar, an accessory that attracted many consumers and became a gimmick for car companies to sell cars. By the end of 2021, more than 20 new models have announced that they will be equipped with lidar as standard, and lidar is on the rise.
Capital injection Car companies encircle the land
In January this year, Ichigo Technology, a vehicle-grade MEMS lidar solution provider, officially announced the completion of a multi-hundreds of millions of yuan Pre-C round of financing. This round of financing is led by Xiaopeng Automobile, and SAIC Motor's Shangyi Capital, Dongfeng Bocom Automobile Fund, Intel Capital, etc. continue to increase their investment. This is the first funding for lidar in 2022.
In the past 2021, there were 25 lidar-related financing events in China, with an amount of more than 14 billion yuan, and vehicle-mounted lidar received nearly 3.8 billion yuan in funds.
Since Aeva went public in early 2021 after raising $200 million, a number of lidar companies have broken into the secondary market, but none are Chinese.
At this time, Hesai Technology announced that it had IPO on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, and thought that the first domestic lidar stock was born, but it was forced to terminate the listing after a few months. It's like a heavy hammer giving a cool blow to the lidar under the agitation.
"There are still problems in the product sequence, and the mass production effect is not convincing", after the withdrawal of the listing application, the financing and orders of Hesai Technology are still in full swing, and have twice obtained a total of 360 million US dollars in financing, and the names of xiaomi and Meituan among the investors are impressively listed.
At a time when technology companies are pouring into the car-making tide, many companies are eager to grasp the enterprises in the core industrial chain first. Taking Xiaomi as an example, the self-developed car part has not yet produced phased results, but there are not many investment and acquisition actions, including the automatic driving technology company Shendong Technology and the automotive chip company Black Sesame Intelligence, which have been included in the xiaomi investment list, and the sensor market is aimed at Hesai Technology.
Hesai Technology is also the treasure of Baidu, and Jidu Automobile has fixed the point of Hesai. At the 2022 CES exhibition, Hesai Technology publicly exhibited for the first time the AT128 automotive grade semi-solid-state lidar that has won millions of fixed-point and equipped with a new generation of self-developed chips, and released the new close-range ultra-wide-angle lidar QT128.
The AT128 is a main lidar launched by Hesai for the ADAS front-loading market, which can provide the necessary sensing capabilities for the production car to achieve L3+ ADAS functions. Hesai AT128 has obtained millions of units of OEMs around the world, including Ideal, Jidu, Gaohe, Lotus, and will be fully mass-produced in the second half of this year in the Planned Capacity of one million units of Hesai "Maxwell" Super Factory.
The investment in the core components of smart cars has also attracted the attention of car companies. As far as lidar is concerned, WEILAI has standard lidar on the ET7 released in early 2021, and the source is the Innovusion Tuduitton invested by NIO Capital.
Robin vs. IPhone 11 size
Innovusion Exhibited at CES the image-class ultra-long-range LiDAR Falcon that will be installed on the NIO ET7. At the same time, the first image-level short- and medium-range lidar Robin is also the world's debut, and will be combined with Falcon to establish more effective safety and performance guarantees for the all-round perception of the vehicle's perimeter.
Then, Xiaopeng also found his own "ally" - Yijing Technology, which is a vehicle-grade MEMS lidar solution provider. On January 10, Yijing Technology completed the Per-C round of financing, led by Xiaopeng Automobile, with an amount of hundreds of millions of yuan. The technical route of Yijing Technology is MEMS lidar, which is applied to unmanned vehicles, intelligent robots and other fields, and has reached a fixed point with a number of unmanned distribution and unmanned logistics technology companies, including Wincher Technology, Yuanrong Qixing and so on.
A few days ago, BYD is signing a strategic cooperation agreement with Sagitar Juchuang, and the two sides will have in-depth cooperation in the three core technology fields of lidar hardware, intelligent perception software and chips, and Sagitar Juchuang appeared at the 2021 BYD Investment Enterprise CEO Annual Meeting, which was welcomed by the automotive circle.
Stabilizing the lidar position is also the key to ensuring that next year's mass production vehicles will be equipped with lidar in time. Because of the delay in delivery of the Polar Fox Alpha S at the end of last year, there was a wave of controversy, and it was inevitable that people would worry about whether the new models delivered this year could be cashed in as scheduled.
Tuduitone CEO Bao Junwei said at the end of the year that in the process of lidar mass production, the key is to find a reliable supplier. To be a mass production supplier of automobiles, it is necessary to meet the stability requirements and ensure the acceptance of gross profit, which requires the consensus of upstream and downstream. At the same time, Bao Regal assured that Tutton's lidar will not skip tickets and will be confirmed to be on the train this year.
Mass production of the first year who can be king
2021 is known as the first year of lidar, and 21 models have been announced to be equipped with lidar, which will be rapidly released in 2022. Guojin Securities Research estimates that the global vehicle laser radar market will reach 4.2 billion yuan in 2022, and the global vehicle laser mine will exceed 30 billion yuan in 2025. The market value of tens of billions of yuan has allowed lidar companies to usher in another spring.
The acceptance attitude of domestic car companies to lidar is very open, investment, self-use and cooperation, which brings good opportunities for the growth of domestic lidar companies. At present, some enterprises have emerged.
Among the models that have been announced to be equipped with lidar, sagitar Juchuang, Tudtong, Hesai Technology, Huawei and other brands have appeared many times, and these have become the first echelon of the game under the opportunity. Among them, there are still some differences in the technical route of the product river.
It is understood that lidar is mainly divided into mechanical lidar, semi-solid-state lidar and solid-state lidar. Mechanical lidar can scan the surrounding environment horizontally at a 360-degree level of view, with higher resolution and ranging distance, but is large, costly, and difficult to assemble.
Semi-solid-state lidar, including two-dimensional rotary mirror and MEMS galvanometer technology, has higher scanning efficiency and greater reliability, but has complex motion, high rotation frequency, and limited lifespan.
The small size and lower cost of all-solid-state lidar are considered to be the future trend of the market.
Domestic head——
In the past 2022 CES LiDAR Awards, semi-solid-state lidar dominated. Tudtong, Hesai Technology, and Sagitar Juchuang have all released a new generation of lidar, most of which are short- and medium-range short-field lidars for 360° near-field blindness.
Tutton released a new product, the short-range LiDAR Robin, which is mainly installed on the vehicle's flanks, headlights, taillights or bumpers, and together with the forward-looking ultra-long-range LiDAR Falcon, it achieves 360° surround perception of the body.
Hesai Technology Long-range Semi-Solid-State LiDAR AT128 is a main lidar launched by Hesai for the ADAS front-loading market, equipped with self-developed chips, which has been mass-produced by millions of OEMs worldwide. The newly released 128-line mechanical rotary lidar QT128, with a detection range of 20m, is mainly used in L4-level robotaxi and robotruck for blindness, and is expected to be delivered in mass production in the first quarter of 2023.
The second generation of intelligent solid-state lidar RS-LiDAR-M1
RoboSense's core products include MEMS solid-state LiDAR system technology solutions and mechanical series LiDAR system technology solutions. In the first half of 2021, its core product, RS-LiDAR-M1, completed SOP version locking and vehicle specification-level mass production, becoming the only second-generation intelligent solid-state lidar in the world to achieve mass production and delivery of vehicle specification frontloads. This product has received many fixed-point orders for passenger cars and commercial projects from BYD, GAC Aegean, WM Motor, Extreme Krypton, Lotus, Yinche Technology, Zhitu Technology and other enterprises, covering various models such as supercars, coupes, SUVs, and heavy trucks. The 128-line mechanical rotary lidar RS-Ruby Plus was released at CES.
In addition, Livox's first vehicle-grade lidar HAP, a collaboration with the Xiaopeng P5, uses a rotary mirror-like solid-state technology solution.
These domestic head enterprises focus on hybrid solid-state lidar, hybrid solid state mainly has three technical routes, one is the technical route of MEMS galvanometer, through micro-galvanometer, do horizontal and vertical vibration scanning. The second is the prism type, which is rotated by a six-sided mirror or an eight-sided mirror to do horizontal scanning. Then the vertical scan is done through the rotating mirror, that is, the lens group with prism and rotating mirror is used to achieve vertical and horizontal two-dimensional scanning. The third is through chipping, the scanned light source is integrated through the chip and then refractive scanning is achieved through a one-dimensional rotor.
Experts pointed out that the differences between these three technical routes are very large. Since it is a technical route, its internal structure, the raw materials used, and the core components are all different, and there are certain differences in cost.
Foreign Leaders——
Velodyne is considered a titan of in-vehicle lidar, mainly mechanical products, but since 2016 began to develop solid-state lidar, the main products include Velary H800 and Velary M1600, is designed for automotive performance.
Valeo is the world's first provider of mass-produced vehicle-mounted lidar, with a current market share of nearly 30%. According to the data, since its launch in 2017, the production has exceeded 150,000. Valeo's second-generation LiDAR SCALA announced that it will be installed in the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedan, which will enable L3 autonomous driving.
Valeo's second-generation lidar SCALA
At CES 2022, Valeo's third-generation scanning lidar made its public debut and will be available in 2024. Its main customers are Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, and there is no cooperation with China's own brands for the time being.
Luminar, which went public in 2020, is also a thriving company, with targeted car companies around the world, featuring hydro and Iris, and announced a partnership with Volvo at CES in 2022.
Ouster is uniquely focused on digital lidar and translates this concept into practical results. Its latest product, the DF (Digital Flash) series of solid-state lidar, provides a flexible, scalable, high-performance solid-state digital lidar platform for the front-loading production market. The DF series is geared towards the 2025 production vehicle project and has already delivered functional prototypes and prototypes to select OEMs and Tier 1s.
Follow-up troops -
After the first year, lidar attracted a new group of entrants in the automotive field.
At the end of 2021, lidar company Beixing Photon announced that it will enter the passenger car field in 2022, and the current products of Beixing are mainly used in large transportation. Li Yuan, CEO of Beixing Photonics, said, "Beixing LiDAR continues to polish mass production capabilities and accumulate reliability experience in the fields of rail transit, high-speed, civil aviation and industrial sensing, which will help us accelerate into the autonomous driving track." ”
The biggest difficulty in realizing its on-board lidar is that the car has its own set of specifications, and at this node we are not challenging scientific principles, but engineering processes. To meet the better performance at low cost, the yield rate is very high, which is a very difficult point for engineering, Li Yuan concluded. "As far as the optical machine system is concerned, we believe that lidar should be the pearl of the entire engineering optical machine system in the next 5 to 10 years, and the only thing that can be comparable to it may be the lithography machine, but the lithography machine is not a mass production equipment."
U.S. AI vision company Weimei Holography has been deployed in the field of lidar since last year, and this year it has received more attention from capital. WeOmere Holography announced last year that it had acquired a patent for a 3D holographic pulsed laser processing device for optical holographic purposes and was already developing a 3D holographic pulsed lidar product.
Last year, Beike Tianhua released the image-level ultra-high resolution solid-state lidar C-Fans-256, which is the world's first 256-line vehicle-grade solid-state lidar. Beike Tianhua has a self-developed chip, and has also developed in the automatic driving business line, and its products are more used in low-speed automatic driving scenarios. However, the market voice is weak, product iteration is slower, and in the era of mass production of passenger car lidar, how its market will be developed is also very important.
Zhang Zhiwu, CEO of Beike Tianhua, believes that "the lidar industry is indeed larger than the camera, and the fierce competition will eliminate a number of startups with a weak moat, and there should be 5-10 large-scale lidar companies in the future market." ”
Che Yun summary
If the route controversy over autonomous driving sensors three years ago made it impossible for lidar companies to see the road ahead, it is now a matter of lifting the fog and foresighting the light.
Optical enterprises are optimistic about the market and capital, covering lenses, lenses, prisms, rotors and other optical parts enterprises ushered in a small wave of development climax. After mass production, technological progress coupled with the decline in the price of lidar caused by the scale effect will further promote the growth of the industry.
Of course, the emergence of force majeure factors is not excluded, as Beixing Photon said, in 2019, in the face of the steady rise in the scale of orders, an extremely optimistic prediction was made for 2020, but it was not expected that the arrival of the new crown epidemic disrupted all rhythms.
After the industry fluctuations and the sudden outbreak of the epidemic, the lidar in 2022 is finally on the car. After getting on the bus, it is the beginning of the bright sword.