Even Musk can’t stop it! On the eve of mass production of L3 autonomous driving, LiDAR becomes standard for smart cars

Entering 2019, there are more and more collaborations in the mass production of LiDAR front-end in the market, but they are still dominated by old LiDAR manufacturers.

First, in July 2019, the Scala LiDAR, which had already been mass-produced on the Audi A8, received LiDAR mass production orders from four major global automakers, with a total order value of nearly RMB 4 billion.

We later learned that one of them was Mercedes-Benz.

The new S-Class sedan released by Mercedes-Benz in September this year is equipped with a Scala second-generation lidar, which will provide perception redundancy for Mercedes-Benz's DrivePilot autonomous driving system.

After Scala comes ibeo.

In August 2019, Great Wall, a domestic independent brand car company, selected the new generation solid-state 4D lidar ibeoNEXT from the German lidar company ibeo, which will be mass-produced on Wei brand models in 2022.

The detection distance of ibeo NEXT 4D solid-state lidar can reach 300 meters, and the horizontal angular resolution is 0.05 degrees. The entire lidar is made of solid-state hardware and no longer contains any moving parts. It is suitable for ADAS and L3-L5 autonomous driving.

In addition, ibeoNEXT can output intensity information maps (similar to grayscale images taken by traditional cameras) while outputting 3D distance information, so it has strong lane detection and recognition capabilities.

In October 2019, Velodyne, the big brother of LiDAR, reached a cooperation with Korean parts supplier Hyundai Mobis to jointly promote the mass production of automotive-grade LiDAR.

Hyundai Mobis and Velodyne plan to launch a lidar-based Level 3 autonomous driving system in 2021.

According to Auto Heart, from 2023 to 2030, Velodyne will provide 400,000 lidars to Hyundai Motor through cooperation with Hyundai Mobis.

If the price is estimated at US$1,000 per piece, the total value of this seven-year order is close to RMB 3 billion.

Currently, Velodyne's customized automotive-grade 32-line lidar Velarray project for Hyundai Motor is progressing rapidly.

3. 2020: Mass production projects are announced frequently, and the new force of LiDAR is coming.

Entering 2020, mass production cooperation between car companies and lidar companies has become more intensive.

Automakers including Volvo, Honda, Lucid Motors, Changan, BAIC New Energy, Xiaopeng Motors, FAW Jiefang, and Shaanxi Automobile Heavy Truck have announced that they will equip their mass-produced vehicles with lidar sensors.

In May this year, Volvo announced that it will equip its new models based on the next-generation scalable modular architecture SPA 2, which will be put into mass production in 2022, with lidar from Silicon Valley startup Luminar.

This lidar will serve as the basic sensor for Volvo's highway autonomous driving system "Highway Pilot" and will be integrated on the top of Volvo vehicles.

The development of the "Highway Pilot" system will most likely be undertaken by Volvo's newly established wholly-owned subsidiary Zenseact.

In fact, as early as June 2018, Volvo completed its investment in Luminar through its technology investment fund.

According to Volvo's plan, its next-generation pure electric XC90 and Polestar 3 models will be built on the SPA 2 architecture and will be mass-produced in 2022.

Therefore, the first mass-produced car equipped with Luminar lidar will be one of the above two models.

In September this year, American electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors announced the Lucid DreamDrive assisted driving system that will be equipped on its first mass-produced car, the Lucid Air.

This system can realize functions including surround view monitoring, blind spot display, traffic sign recognition, automatic emergency braking and driver fatigue monitoring.

A major highlight of this system is that it will be equipped with a front-mounted laser radar sensor. According to Lucid engineers, this laser radar has 125 lines.

Although the specific manufacturer has not been officially announced, you may as well look for 125-line laser radars on the market, and you can probably guess which company's product is used.

This year, ICT giant Huawei also entered the LiDAR field. Although it is a latecomer in the field of LiDAR, its progress is extremely rapid.

On October 24 this year, the BAIC Arcfox αT model was launched. At the press conference, Arcfox also demonstrated a new model equipped with three laser radars.

A month later, at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Yu Liguo, vice general manager of BAIC New Energy and president of Arcfox, revealed that BAIC New Energy and Huawei are working together to create the next model code-named HBT, which will be equipped with three 96-line laser radars.

Coincidentally, Changan announced in November this year that it would join hands with Huawei and CATL to create a new high-end smart electric vehicle brand. Its models are planned to be equipped with 36 sensors, including 5 laser radars.

Huawei will be the main developer of autonomous driving for Changan's new brand of smart electric vehicles, supporting their evolution to a higher level.

Changan's official estimate: By 2025, there will be millions of vehicles connected to the world of autonomous driving.

With the plan to have millions of autonomous driving vehicles, even if each vehicle is equipped with 1-2 LiDARs, the LiDAR orders will be very considerable.

What is basically certain at present is that BAIC New Energy's next-generation models and Changan's high-end smart electric vehicles will both use Huawei's self-developed lidar products.

According to information officially disclosed by Huawei, its laser radar adopts a platform design and has laid out a series of long-, medium- and short-range products. Its technical route is a rotating mirror scanning architecture, which is a semi-solid-state laser radar.

These lidars will be used for autonomous driving in urban areas, highways and parking scenarios.

The aforementioned product that has been confirmed to be used in BAIC Arcfox's next-generation models is Huawei's 96-line equivalent medium-range laser radar. When the reflectivity is 10%, the detection distance of this product is 150 meters. It is expected to be launched in the market from the end of 2021.

Honda, a global automaker, is also actively planning the mass production of autonomous driving systems. Like the sensor solution of Changan's high-end brand mentioned above, Honda plans to produce 5 sensors at the beginning.

This veteran Japanese automaker recently announced that it will equip its next-generation Legend model with the Traffic Jam Pilot autonomous driving system. In order to ensure the safety of this system, Honda will install 5 laser radars on the model.

The model is expected to be unveiled in March 2021 and is currently undergoing testing.

At this stage, Honda has not yet disclosed which company's lidar it will use.

However, based on the launch time of this model and the automotive-grade lidar products available on the market, Valeo's second-generation Scala lidar is likely to be Honda's choice.

In the application of heavy-duty truck autonomous driving, Yijing Technology, a domestic MEMS lidar innovation company, also received an order from Inceptio Technology, an autonomous driving truck solution provider, in August this year.

The former will supply lidar sensors for Inceptio Technology's L3 autonomous driving trucks that will be mass-produced in 2021.

At present, Yingche Technology has established in-depth cooperation with the leading domestic heavy-duty truck manufacturers and launched the A-prototype of L3 autonomous driving heavy-duty trucks.

Yijing Technology provides Yingche Technology with a large field-of-view MEMS lidar ML-30s for short-range applications, with a field of view of 140° × 70°; at the same time, its equivalent beam is as high as 160 lines, and the angular resolution is less than 0.5°.

ML-30s can provide Inche Technology's self-driving trucks with high-resolution 3D perception coverage with a wide field of view, minimizing the risk factor of blind spots around the vehicle body.

Yijing Technology MEMS LiDAR ML-30s

With excellent product performance and mature commercial implementation solutions, Yijing Technology is gradually gaining recognition in the industry and has begun to carry out commercial implementation cooperation with leading manufacturers.

In addition to the strategic cooperation with Inceptio Technology in the commercial vehicle field, Yijing Technology has also made milestone progress in the passenger vehicle field this year:

It is reported that GAC's next-generation Robotaxi will be equipped with the ML-30s MEMS laser radar product launched by Yijing Technology for blindness-filling applications. This product was also installed on GAC's Ruqi travel platform models at this year's Guangzhou Auto Show, attracting the attention of many participants.

In order to ensure the production capacity demand for subsequent mass production, in July this year, Yijing Technology built an automotive-grade MEMS lidar production line with an annual output of 50,000 units at its Changshu factory in Jiangsu, which can meet the commercialization needs of lidar in the next three years.

With the start of automotive-grade mass production, winning orders from leading manufacturers, and the release of long- and short-range product series, Yijing Technology is gradually expanding its commercial ecological layout.

LeiShen Intelligent, a domestic laser radar company founded in Shenzhen, has also recently received good news. Its independently developed CH series 32-line hybrid solid-state laser radar has officially passed the vehicle regulation test of the National Automobile Quality Supervision and Inspection Center, and obtained the IATF16949:2016 quality system certification.

This also makes the LeiShen CH32 the first laser radar in China and the second in the world to be certified for automotive regulations. Dongfeng's Sharing-van series of unmanned vehicles that have been mass-produced are also equipped with this radar.