Per reporter: Sun Lei Per editor: Pei Jianru
Before the Sharon Car declared "do not speak below 4 lidar", after the first large-scale use of solid-state lidar by Xiaoma Zhixing. In order to create higher-order driver assistance functions, car companies and autonomous driving start-ups have begun to "roll in" on the assembly of perception hardware.
A few days ago, Xiaoma Zhixing released the sixth generation of automatic driving system. Compared with the previous generation, the sixth generation of Xiaoma Zhixing's autonomous driving software and hardware system continues to follow the technical route of multi-sensor deep integration (Sensor Fusion), and upgrades in the direction of mass production in the number and selection of sensors. Among them, the system adopts solid-state lidar on a large scale for the first time, placing 4 solid-state lidar on the roof of the vehicle, while distributing 3 blind lidars on the left and right sides and rear of the vehicle.
In fact, at the end of 2020, mass production passenger cars will begin to be equipped with lidar. In 2021, the pace of lidar "getting on the car" has accelerated. According to the incomplete statistics of the "Daily Economic News" reporter, by the end of 2021, more than 20 new models, including Xiaopeng G9, Avita 11, Gaohe HiPhi Z, etc., have been announced to be equipped with lidar.
It is worth mentioning that although the lidar accelerates the "getting on the car", it has not yet reached the stage of large-scale mass production, and many technical routes are still being explored. "Under the current technical conditions, lidar is a shortcut to L3+ level autonomous driving technology. The L3 intelligent driving car is expected to drive the mass production of lidar in 2022. CICC said in the research report.
Image source: Per reporter Sun Lei photographed (data map)
Diversified development of technical routes
According to public information, liDAR (LiDAR), known as Laser Detecting and Ranging in English, detects and distances through the laser beam, and is composed of three parts: a laser transmitter, an optical receiver, and an information processing system, which can sense the surrounding environment in real time, obtain the precise distance and contour information of surrounding objects, and is one of the core components of automatic driving at the perceptual level.
The core components of lidar include lasers, scanning systems (beam manipulation elements), optical systems for transmission and reception, photodetectors, and signal processing systems. Among them, there are different technical routes in scanning systems, lasers and photodetectors, which also makes the overall technical routes of lidar numerous.
Image source: Daily Economic News Infographic
Usually lidar is divided according to the scanning method, according to the presence or absence of mechanical rotation components can be divided into mechanical radar, semi-solid radar, solid-state radar, and semi-solid radar can be divided into two categories: rotor and MEMS galvanometer, solid-state lidar mainly includes OPA (phased array) and Flash (flood surface array) two categories.
Specifically, mechanical radar drives the overall 360-degree rotation of the optical machine structure through the motor, which is the most classic and most mature mechanical architecture of lidar. However, mechanical lidar is expensive, bulky (usually housed on the roof) and has shorter mechanical components, often appearing on RoboTaxi. For example, the world's first vehicle-mounted lidar company Velodyne's flagship product HDL-64E is a mechanical radar.
Semi-solid-state radar refers to the transceiver module stationary, only the scanner mechanical movement, in the existing technology and process level, it can better meet the requirements of mass production models for radar stability and life. For example, Sagitar Juchuang launched a semi-solid-state radar M1 using the MEMS galvanometer route, which will currently be installed in GAC AION LX, WM M7 and other models, while Huawei launched a single-axis rotor semi-solid radar.
The core of solid-state radar is to eliminate mechanical moving parts and replace the discrete devices at the transmitter and receiver ends of traditional mechanical lidar with an integrated chip structure. Its advantage is that it is small in size, and at the same time it can also solve the problem of high material cost and high mass production cost faced by mechanical radar, and it is easy to generate a market price that can be applied on a large scale after the technology matures.
Semi-solid-state radar dominates the current mainstream
From the perspective of the development of lidar, mechanical radar has developed earlier and has high technical maturity, but it uses a large number of mechanical moving parts inside, which are defective in volume and life, and it is difficult to pass the vehicle regulation certification. At the same time, the unit price of mechanical radar at that time was tens of thousands of dollars, which was also unaffordable for many car companies.
In the view of Wang Yuquan, an expert in the global scientific and technological innovation industry, lidar is about to enter a mature period, and the competition is the cost advantage and scale advantage. Cost advantage brings scale advantage, scale effect will further promote technological maturity, technological maturity promotes cost reduction, and the industry can have a virtuous circle.
It is understood that Velodyne's early 64-line mechanical lidar sold for about $80,000, and the 32-line mechanical lidar sold for about $20,000. In contrast, the current price of semi-solid-state radar is around $1,000, which is much lower than that of mechanical radar, which also makes the semi-solid-state lidar mass production models of various manufacturers on the market.
CITIC Securities believes that the current price continues to explore, semi-solid-state radar meets the vehicle regulations with "getting on the car" conditions, and car companies are accelerating the pace of lidar "getting on the car" in order to enhance the competitiveness of products in terms of intelligence and safety performance. According to incomplete statistics, at present, Models such as Xiaopeng P5, Weilai ET7, and Polar Fox Alpha S New HI Edition all use semi-solid-state radar.
Image source: Per reporter Dong Tianyi photographed (data map)
However, CITIC Securities also believes that the current technical end-of-game solution has not yet appeared, the current semi-solid-state radar occupies the mainstream, manufacturers with semi-solid-state products in the short and medium term is more likely to obtain mass production application opportunities; and solid-state radar as the development direction of lidar, the corresponding technical layout will affect the future product competitiveness of manufacturers.
It is reported that the DF series launched by San Francisco lidar startup Ouster at 2022 CES is a solid-state radar using the Flash route, which covers a full set of solid-state digital lidar with short, medium and long distances, which can be accurately imaged in the global field of view without motion blur. However, industry analysts said that although solid-state radar is considered the future, its stable mass production moment does not seem to have arrived.
"Different architectures, such as mechanical, MEMS, and solid state, have different advantages and disadvantages for different applications. However, what is actually extremely important is the specific optical design performance achieved, the quality of production and the large-scale feasibility of production, and the ability to achieve an attractive price point. In addition, the ability to combine lidar hardware with high-performance perception software is also a major differentiator. Velodyne chief commercial officer Sinclair Vass has said.
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