Coverage of the digital economy
Define a transformed China
In 2021, science and technology giants will pile up to build cars, and lidar will take off.
Written by | Tabor Network Mozi Su
Edit | Shikino
Science and technology factories piled into the bureau to build cars, stirring up a pool of spring water in the car market.
The more players there are, the "inner volume" begins. When intelligence becomes the core capability of new cars, the number of hardware represented by lidar has become the focus of competition. Public information shows that almost all major manufacturers have plans to mass-produce lidar models.
The lidar industry has taken advantage of the momentum, and the number of financing transactions and fixed-point models have reached new heights.
2022, "First Year of Mass Production"
Baidu and Geely jointly established Jidu Automobile, Ali jointly launched Zhiji Automobile with SAIC Motor and Pudong New Area, Lei Jun personally took command of Xiaomi Car, and 360 invested in Nezha Automobile... They all choose to become the "protagonists" in the field of car building.
Huawei and Tencent are willing to be "green leaves", the former combining soft and hard, while laying out components and intelligent solutions, while the latter focuses on "connection" and creating a digital base capability with "cloud, map, id" as the core. In addition, JD.com, DJI, iFLYTEK and other enterprises have also revealed new trends in the field of car manufacturing.
The addition of new players is subverting the entire automotive market, and car companies have begun a big competition, and smart hardware is one of the core elements of competition.
It seems that overnight, lidar, which was attacked by Tesla CEO Elon Musk as "fool-only" hardware, became the hottest "fragrant food" in the car circle. Whether it is an "old cannon" or a new recruit, most of the latest mass production cars are equipped with lidar, and the Great Wall's Salon Car even said: "Don't talk under 4."
Industry insiders speculate that with the "inner volume" of the car circle, lidar is about to usher in the "first year of mass production".
At present, Great Wall, GAC, Nio, Ideal, Xiaopeng and other automakers are actively laying out automatic driving solutions with lidar as the main sensor. As of December last year, more than 20 car companies had announced the use of lidar, and there were 13 lidar mass production models unveiled at last year's Guangdong Auto Show alone.
According to the incomplete statistics of Tabor Network, the delivery time of 19 models is concentrated in 2021 to 2022, and many models have been officially announced to be fixed-point lidar.
According to the Chezhi database, among the models that have announced fixed-point lidar, the models equipped with a lidar are Weilai ET7 (including et5 listed in December 2022), Gaohe HiPhi Z, SAIC Zhiji L7, etc., while Xiaopeng G9, SAIC Zhiji LS7 and other models are equipped with two lidars, GAC Aion LX Plus, Avita 11, WM M7 and other models are equipped with three lidars, and Sharon Mech Dragon is equipped with 4 lidars.
Among them, Sagitar Juchuang, Huawei, Hesai, Tudtong, DJI Livox, Luminar, etc., are all popular brands with fixed models.
In the early stage of the outbreak, capital squatting
The industry generally believes that the lidar market is already in the early stages of the outbreak.
According to Huatai Securities' calculations, the amount of domestic vehicle-mounted lidar shipments is expected to reach 1.5 billion yuan in 2022 and 11 billion yuan by 2025, corresponding to a CAGR of 94% from 2023 to 2025.
According to consulting firm Yole, the lidar market size will increase from $1.8 billion in 2020 to $5.7 billion in 2026, with an average annual compound growth rate of 21%. Among them, the ADAS lidar market size will grow to $2.3 billion, with an average annual compound growth rate of 111%. The autonomous driving segment is expected to reach $575 million by 2026, with an average annual COMPOUND growth rate of 33%.
As the lidar market matures, the frequency and amount of financing in this area are also gradually rising, reaching a new peak by 2021. According to Tianyancha data, there were a total of 25 financing incidents in the field of lidar in 2021, with an amount of more than 14 billion yuan, of which vehicle-mounted lidar harvested nearly 3.8 billion yuan.
At this stage, the head lidar enterprises have completed the accumulation of technology, high-performance vehicle-grade lidar products have been relatively mature, the cost is relatively reduced, and the mass production of vehicle regulations has been qualified. According to media statistics, angel rounds and seed rounds accounted for only 2% of the financing events in this field last year, and the financing events of B rounds and subsequent rounds are increasing.
It is foreseeable that with the gradual clarification of the application scenario of automatic driving landing, capital will turn more attention to relatively mature head enterprises, and the new car-making players have almost all chosen their own optimistic head lidar companies.
Huawei:
Although it has not been in the game for a long time, Huawei has already emerged in the lidar industry.
Huawei officially announced its entry into the lidar business in August 2020, and in just over a year, Huawei has cooperated with AUTOmakers such as BAIC, GAC, Changan, and Nezha. Huawei's self-developed lidar and millimeter-wave radar are expected to be launched in 2021-2022 in the number of cooperative models, with the number of installations per vehicle ranging from 1 to 3.
According to Yole Development, Huawei has become the fifth largest lidar supplier in 2021, accounting for 3% of the global market share. Some analysts said that according to the current estimate of the scale of the main engine factory, Huawei's annual lidar shipments are expected to exceed 100,000.
Hesai Technology:
Hesai Technology was undoubtedly a big hit last year, and the twists and turns of terminating the IPO application of the science and technology innovation board at the beginning of the year did not affect the attention of capital and enterprises to it.
In 2021, Hesai Technology reached cooperation with more than 12 automakers and autonomous driving companies, and has a close relationship with the ideals of the new car-making forces, as well as the newly entered Baidu, Jidu and Xiaomi.
In November last year, Xiaomi Production and Investment added $70 million after leading investment in Hesai Technology in June. Coupled with the previously announced financing of more than 300 million US dollars, the total financing of Hesai Technology's D round of financing exceeded 370 million US dollars, and the leading investors included Hillhouse Venture Capital, Meituan and CPE in addition to Xiaomi Production and Investment.
Baidu and Jidu Automobile, which it cooperates with Geely, have chosen Hesai Technology. Baidu announced that it will jointly develop a new generation of lidar products with Hesai Technology and install them on the fifth-generation Robotaxi, and Jidu also officially announced its strategic cooperation with Hesai Technology.
In addition, Hesai Technology has also partnered with Nvidia to apply Pandar128 lidar to the NVIDIA DRIVE platform as a Ground Truth sensor for NVIDIA's autonomous driving development system.
Not long ago, Hesai Technology officially released the long-range hybrid solid-state lidar AT128, which will be equipped with the ideal X01. The radar is ready for ADAS front-loading production and can accommodate both long-range (200m@10%) and ultra-high frequencies (1.53 million per second, single return).
Sagitar Juchuang:
Sagitar Juchuang, which focuses on MEMS lidar, also has no shortage of giants, and has received strategic investment from Alibaba Group's Cainiao Network, as well as SAIC, BAIC, Yutong and other enterprises.
In December last year, BYD Co., Ltd. and Sagitar Juchuang officially reached a strategic cooperation. At the same time, BYD also made a strategic investment in Sagitar Juchuang (the specific amount was not disclosed).
According to the data released by the media, Sagitar Juchuang has won more than 40 front-loading mass production fixed-point orders in 2021, with remarkable results. According to other sources, Sagitar Juchuang is considering an IPO in Hong Kong this year, and it is expected to raise 1 billion US dollars.
One Path Technology:
Also focusing on MEMS lidar, Yijing Technology has also recently received new financing.
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. After completion, Xiaopeng Automobile held 6.2081% of the shares. Previously, Yijing Technology has reached a fixed point with a number of unmanned distribution and unmanned logistics technology companies, including Yingche Technology and Yuanrong Qixing.
Semi-solid is rising, and costs are waiting to fall
Although lidar has begun to test the water for mass production, there is still a distance from the real large-scale landing, and cost is one of the biggest problems.
As can be seen from the table above, the price of models with lidar installed at this stage is generally high, most of which are priced between 300,000-800,000 yuan, and the price of first-class models is more than 800,000.
According to the data of the research agency, the average price of the current lidar products is generally around 1,000 US dollars, while the price of other sensors has dropped to less than 150 US dollars, and the lowest price of a single car camera has even dropped to about 30 US dollars, and the price gap between lidar and other sensors still exists.
(Image source: Everbright Securities)
For OEMs, it is necessary to comprehensively select an optimal solution between different lidar products, based on factors such as performance, vehicle specification reliability, cost, and mass production.
According to the structure of the scanning module, lidar can be roughly divided into three types: mechanical, semi-solid, and solid.
Mechanical lidar first entered the market, and the technology has entered a stable period, but because of its large size, high assembly requirements, short service life and other reasons, it is difficult to meet the demand for front-loading mass production. Solid-state radar scanning speed is fast and high precision, but the current technology is not yet mature, and it is difficult to achieve commercialization in the short term.
Semi-solid-state lidar with relatively higher cost performance is more mainstream in the front-loading mass production scheme at this stage, and most of the above-mentioned popular companies also choose this route.
However, there are still differences in the technical routes of semi-solid subdivisions such as rotors, MEMES micro-oscillators, and prisms.
Referring to the previous development path of millimeter-wave radar, semi-solid-state lidar is still in the early stage of development, whether it is hardware or software, there are many problems to be solved, the cost is still high, and the distance from the real large-scale landing is still far.
Relevant data show that there are currently more than 2,800 lidar-related companies in the mainland. Among them, more than 1170 related enterprises were established within 5 years, accounting for 41.4%. A large number of new lidar players need to find the right route to break through.
At the same time, from automakers to lidar companies, the industrial chain is starting from controlling the cost of upstream components and iterating on technical paths to find solutions. Analysts at Guosen Securities said that the price of lidar is expected to continue to decline along with the promotion of technical solutions towards semi-solid and pure solids, from $1500 / piece in 2021 to $400 / piece in 2025.
Mainland China's "Intelligent Connected Vehicle Technology Roadmap 2.0" clearly states that by 2025, the sales of intelligent and connected vehicles of the L2-L3 level will account for more than 50% of the total sales of cars that year, and by 2030, this proportion will exceed 70%. Lidar is bound to grow together with the huge space for automobile intelligence.
Decades ago, when the automotive industry first began to integrate with consumer electronics, supporting hardware such as speakers and audio once ushered in huge dividends. Today, the car has become the largest intelligent hardware complex, and the software and hardware related to autonomous driving are about to take off.
When the three conditions of performance, reliability and cost are complete, lidar will usher in the first year of real mass production.
Add group tips
LEGAL COUNSEL: Yingke Law Firm
Intensive Reading