"LiDAR" at the crossroads! (Attached with meeting agenda)

At the beginning of 2021, LiDAR has once again become a hot topic in the field of science and technology. First, Xiaopeng Motors and Tesla "sprayed" each other, and then Huawei released its first automotive-grade LiDAR . The competition for autonomous driving sensor routes, LiDAR's entry into the original equipment market, and the rise of Chinese manufacturers have become key areas of focus in the industry. In this issue, Lei Sir will analyze the current status of LiDAR and interpret its development trends from four topics. At the same time, we also welcome professionals in the field of LiDAR to actively participate in the interaction and leave a message at the end of the article to tell Lei Sir your insights!

1. Elon Musk helps laser radar go mainstream

As the concept of artificial intelligence becomes popular around the world, anything that is supported by it will inevitably attract attention from all parties, and even become a hot topic, such as smart security and smart robots. As an important means of transportation in people's lives, cars have brought a trillion-dollar market value to the world, and naturally become a key breakthrough area for artificial intelligence.

In fact, as early as the 1970s, technologically advanced countries took the lead in starting research on driverless cars, with universities and research institutes mainly involved in the early stages, such as Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and VisLab Laboratory of the University of Parma in Italy. After that, many automakers, such as Audi, Ford, Volvo, Nissan, and BMW, successively carried out driverless layouts, laying the foundation for the commercialization of driverless cars.

↑The above is a screenshot of Elon Musk’s Twitter

Compared with the conservative strategies of traditional automakers, Tesla, as a new force, has come from behind in the field of autonomous driving. In 2015, it launched the semi-autonomous driving system Autopilot , which was also an early commercial autonomous driving technology. To a certain extent, it has driven and accelerated the arrival of the commercial era of autonomous driving vehicles. As the core component of autonomous driving vehicles, sensors have naturally become a key area of ​​competition for the industry and capital markets.

Cameras vs. LiDAR Sensors

Sensors can be likened to the "eyes" of self-driving cars. Their importance is self-evident. They are mainly divided into three categories: lidar, millimeter-wave radar, and cameras. The industry has never stopped debating the technical route of autonomous driving. As an innovator of autonomous driving and a supporter of the camera technology route, Elon Musk has publicly criticized lidar many times. He believes that "lidar is like a bunch of appendixes growing on a person's body. The existence of the appendix itself is basically meaningless. If there are a lot of them, it would be ridiculous. Any company that relies on lidar may die."

However, reality has ruthlessly slapped us in the face. Tesla's self-driving cars have had serious accidents many times, once again proving that relying solely on camera sensors is not enough. Especially when the degree of human involvement continues to decrease, LiDAR seems to be indispensable. In fact, judging from the plans of other automakers, LiDAR solutions are becoming mainstream.

2. The rise of LiDAR, from a single company to a hundred companies competing

LiDAR is the abbreviation of Light Detection And Ranging in English, and its Chinese name is laser radar. As an active imaging radar technology developed on the basis of laser ranging radar, laser radar transmits and receives laser beams, analyzes the return time after the laser encounters the target object, calculates the relative distance to the target object, and uses the three-dimensional coordinates, reflectivity, texture and other information of a large number of dense points on the surface of the target object collected in this process to quickly obtain the three-dimensional model of the measured target and various related data such as lines, surfaces, and volumes, establish a three-dimensional point cloud (PointCloud) map, and draw an environmental map to achieve the purpose of environmental perception.

LiDAR Principle

When it comes to automotive LiDAR, Velodyne, a technology company located in Silicon Valley, has to be mentioned. As the originator of LiDAR, Velodyne started out in the audio business, and then expanded its business scope to the LiDAR field. In the early stage of the concept of autonomous driving, Velodyne was almost unrivaled and was highly sought after by capital and the industry. Baidu, Ford, Nikon, Hyundai Mobis and others have invested in it, on the one hand to strive for production capacity, and on the other hand to be optimistic about the future development of autonomous driving. Since 2007, Velodyne has provided LiDAR for almost all kinds of autonomous driving car projects.

*Indicates investment or acquisition, others are self-developed (from Jianyuecheping)

However, since Velodyne's early lidar products adopted a mechanical rotation technology route, as the number of lines increased, a large number of stacked rotating structures were required, resulting in a sharp increase in complexity and cost. Velodyne's 64-line lidar product sells for as high as 700,000 yuan per unit. In this case, it is almost impossible for the self-driving car project to be mass-produced. For this reason, the development of lidars with higher integration and lower costs has also become a breakthrough direction for the industry.

In this context, a large number of start-up companies have emerged at home and abroad to engage in the research and development of new laser radars. Coupled with the pursuit of capital, after several years of development, the laser radar field has changed from a monopoly to a situation where hundreds of schools of thought contend. From the perspective of technical routes, in addition to the traditional mechanical rotation type, it can be roughly divided into several technical routes: prism type, rotating mirror type and galvanometer type.

Development Trend of Automotive LiDAR Technology

Although the debate over LiDAR technology has never stopped over the past few years, from the application side, "lower cost", "better performance and stability", and "closer to mass production" have always been important criteria for evaluating the quality of a LiDAR product. From the perspective of technology trends, high performance, low cost, lightweight, and all-solid-state are the main directions for the future development of LiDAR.

On the other hand, from the perspective of time, LiDAR is in the transition stage from rotary to MEMS solid-state. If you want to increase the number of LiDAR lines, the direct way is to stack the transceiver modules to improve the vertical field of view and angular resolution, but this method is undoubtedly a poison to quench thirst. The stacking of components will lead to a significant increase in costs and increase the complexity of the structure, which is obviously contrary to market demand. Relatively speaking, MEMS LiDAR solutions are becoming the next important technical direction due to the high maturity of components, easy integration and cost reduction. Companies including Valeo, Bosch , RoboSense, Hesai Technology, and Raytheon Intelligence have all invested in this field. In the long run, with the development of chip technology, phased array solutions and high-performance Flash solutions will also be further developed.

In addition, the rapid rise of China's innovative companies has also become a major trend in the lidar field.

3. Industrial structure is restructured, and local manufacturers begin to exert their strength

I believe everyone still remembers that in 2019, Velodyne, a global LiDAR giant, announced the withdrawal of its entire direct sales team and part of its technical team in China. This was a landmark event in the rise of Chinese LiDAR manufacturers. Before this, even though Velodyne's 64-line LiDAR needed at least half a year to be delivered, customers still had no choice but to wait in line. Now this phenomenon is gone forever.

As domestic manufacturers' products continue to iterate, their performance and stability can basically meet market demand. In addition, foreign manufacturers are in short supply, so more and more downstream manufacturers are starting to choose domestic LiDARs, including Baidu, an investor of Velodyne. In recent years, Velodyne has also been replaced by Hesai Technology products in Baidu's Apollo car project.

Distribution of domestic LiDAR industry chain

At present, in the aftermarket LiDAR market, Velodyne, Hesai Technology, and RoboSense have actually formed a situation where they compete on the same stage. Although Velodyne still occupies most of the market share, domestic manufacturers are launching a fierce attack on it. This is also true in foreign markets. The LiDAR equipped on Lucid Ai r, the first mass-produced car that Lucid, a "new car-making force" in the United States, plans to deliver in the spring of 2021 , is very likely to be a Chinese brand product. This shows that after years of development, the global LiDAR market landscape has undergone major changes, and Chinese local manufacturers are rapidly rising and becoming a new growth pole!

As the most active region in artificial intelligence and autonomous driving in the world, the domestic market has a stronger desire for new technologies, which has also led to the explosive growth of the domestic LiDAR industry. According to relevant statistics, there are currently 46 companies in China that have entered the LiDAR field. Among them, domestic representative companies Hesai Technology, RoboSense and LeiShen Intelligence all successfully completed financing in 2020, with Hesai Technology's Series C financing reaching as high as US$173 million.

Recently, Xiaopeng Motors announced that it will join hands with Livox, a company incubated by DJI , to launch the world's first mass-produced smart car with LiDAR. Livox will carry out a series of customized developments for Xiaopeng Motors based on the Horiz automotive-grade LiDAR platform. These actions mean that domestic LiDAR companies will play an increasingly important role in the future era of autonomous driving. And Huawei's entry is accelerating this trend.