Can lidar have the last laugh?

In 2023, intelligent assisted driving will become the absolute focus of competition among major car companies.

Lidar , as an emerging representative of smart driving sensor hardware , began large-scale mass production in 2022. It experienced a rapid climb in 2023 and officially started the first year of "increasing volume".

Looking back on 2023: Deliveries surge, undercurrents surge

In 2023, one of the landmark events that will boost confidence in the lidar market will be the listing of Hesai Technology on Nasdaq. At the beginning of 2024, Sagitar Jutron also successfully landed on the Hong Kong stock market, which is quite a sign of successive relays to consolidate market confidence.

As leading car companies step up their efforts to implement NOA and seek to get rid of the restrictions of high-precision maps, the lidar track has opened up an undercurrent of market competition, ushering in an increase in both delivery volume and user perception.

According to the data from the Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute’s intelligent driving configuration database, Hesai Technology, Tudatong, Sagitar Juchuang, and Huawei Technologies ranked among the top three in terms of lidar installed capacity (excluding imports and options) throughout 2023. Together they account for over 80% of the market share.

Judging from the total annual delivery volume, the annual sales volume of Sagitar Jutron in 2023 is approximately 256,000 units, of which the delivery volume of products used in ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems ) is approximately 240,000 units, accounting for over 90%, which is relatively A year-on-year increase of 550.41% compared to 2022.

Image source: Sagitar Juchuang

Hesai is not far behind. Its delivery data in December 2023 exceeded the 50,000 mark, and its cumulative delivery volume exceeded 300,000 units. Tudatong's vehicle terminal delivery volume in 2023 will exceed 150,000, with a growth rate of over 100%, and the cumulative delivery of high-performance lidar vehicle terminals will exceed 22W.

The lidar market has shown a trend of rapid growth. The reasons behind this are not only the popularity of high-end intelligent driving solutions with multi-sensor fusion, but also the successful cost reduction of domestic lidar companies. The cost of lidar has dropped to the level of several hundred dollars.

This further stimulates major car companies to consider lidar sensing fusion solutions as an immediate choice for building intelligent driving systems. This can be seen from the number of cooperative car companies and orders obtained by each lidar company.

As of December 18, 2023, Sagitar Jutron has obtained fixed orders for 62 models from 21 car companies and Tier 1. Hesai has established cooperation with FAW, SAIC, Great Wall, Leapmotor, Nezha, Cyrus and other car companies, and has obtained lidar mass production appointments for more than 50 models from 14 OEMs and Tier-1 customers.

From the perspective of specific models, although there are models of around 200,000 yuan and below such as Geely Rui Lan 7 and Xpeng P5 equipped with lidar, lidar is still a core component of mid-to-high-end models.

At present, vehicles equipped with lidar are mainly based on single-cell solutions, and there is a trend of further growth in two-cell laser radar solutions. Models priced between RMB 300,000 and RMB 500,000 are still the main growth points of the lidar market. This year, more models are expected to fall into the range below RMB 300,000, and the installed volume of lidar is expected to further increase.

However, a few leading companies have captured the vast majority of market orders. Such concentrated market competition has made it difficult for followers to follow up or expand their market share. They are even more faced with high initial investment costs, patented technology barriers, and insufficient economies of scale. influence of other factors.

For current lidar companies, especially those in a catching-up position, obtaining orders and increasing production capacity are still the main tasks. If they fail to win the favor of car companies, it may become increasingly difficult for these second- and third-tier lidar companies to make profits, and the Matthew Effect may become even more significant. Last year, some lidar companies that failed to achieve mass production breakthroughs have reported layoffs and significant cost reductions.

This does not mean that they have no room to exert their efforts.

LiDAR products continue to innovate. Major car companies choose different types of LiDAR products, and the market structure is not fixed. If breakthroughs can be made in technological innovation and cost reduction, it will not be a problem to win the favor of car companies. In addition, there is still a lot of room for price reductions in lidar-equipped models. With the improvement of intelligence in mid- to low-end models , a vast market needs to be tapped.

In addition, lidar can not only be used in the field of autonomous driving , but also in the fields of robotics , unmanned distribution, general surveying and mapping, security, monitoring, etc., and its application popularity is also increasing. It can be used by enterprises in more industrial application fields.

Overall, in 2023, the major domestic lidar manufacturers will focus on reducing costs, seizing orders, and building production capacity. Some manufacturers are riding on this trend of high-end smart driving development and are doing quite well.

This main line may continue in 2024, and there will also be some new changes.

Looking to 2024: innovation, cost reduction, quality, growth

To explore the development of the lidar industry in 2024, there are several major backgrounds that need to be clarified:

First, the development of L3 level autonomous driving has intensified the test on the capabilities of car companies and smart driving companies;

Second, competing for urban NOA will still be the main theme of the smart driving market in 2024, and the light map solution will still be the mainstream;

Third, some domestic players have begun to try purely visual solutions to lidar. In 2024, more results may be revealed;

Fourth, most car companies failed to achieve their sales targets in 2023. Fierce price competition has not stopped until the end of 2023. Trading price for volume is still a common phenomenon. Price wars may continue in 2024...

Based on the above characteristics, the underlying logic of lidar development in 2024 is still to achieve a balance between cost reduction and performance improvement. Taken together, it is inseparable from the four key words of innovation, cost reduction, quality and growth.

innovation

At CES 2024 at the beginning of this year, automotive lidar is one of the products with a high appearance rate. Local players such as Hesai Technology, Sagitar, and Seyond flex their muscles.

On January 9, Hesai Technology released the 512-line ultra-high-definition ultra-long-range lidar AT512, which was simultaneously displayed at CES 2024. According to reports, AT512 can achieve a standard distance measurement of 300 meters (@10% reflectivity), which is 50% higher than the previous generation product AT128; the longest detection distance can reach 400 meters. And AT512 is equipped with Hesai’s latest fourth-generation self-developed chip , which has further improved integration compared to previous generations of products.

Hesai said that ranging and resolution are the two core performance indicators of lidar. There are many influencing factors, and the design of the transceiver module is the top priority.

Chip research and development cannot be achieved overnight. Hesai has established a chip team since 2017 to develop its own transceiver module integration technology and establish a certain first-mover advantage. Hesai's latest fourth-generation self-developed chip integration has been able to achieve ultra-high performance with a maximum processing point of more than 100 million points per second.

Sagitar Juchuang has released a new ultra-long-range lidar product for mass production of L3+ smart driving front-end equipment: M3. M3 is the fourth product of Sagitar Juchuang M platform and the first ultra-long-range lidar of M platform. It adopts 940nm laser transceiver solution and can achieve 300m@10% ultra-long distance measurement capability and 0.05°x0.05° Ultra-high-definition three-dimensional imaging capabilities with angular resolution.

The relevant person in charge of Sagitar Juchuang told Gasgoo: "The responsibility for L3+ lies with the car companies. The shortcomings of cameras and millimeter waves cannot be made up for. In the L3+ perception system, the weight and status of lidar will be higher, so a high-performance More powerful ultra-long-range ultra-high-definition lidar.”

In the past, ultra-long-range radar using 1550nm was not only costly but also had a large number of engineering problems that were difficult to solve. It is reported that M3 is superior to traditional 1550nm lidar, and its cost is 40% to 50% lower, its size is more than 50% smaller, and its power consumption is more than 30% lower.

There is also Seyond Tudatong's Lingque W lidar, which can detect up to 150 meters, has an ultra-wide-angle field of view of 120°*70°, and has a power consumption of less than 9W. ZVISION EZ6 from Yiji Technology uses a highly integrated SPAD architecture and 192-line vertical scanning technology to achieve a ranging capability of 180m@10% and an angular resolution of 0.2°x0.1°.

Taken together, in terms of LiDAR performance improvement, longer detection range and higher resolution are the two main points of contention.

The relevant person in charge of Sagitar Juchuang pointed out that there are two directions to improve the ranging capability. One is to increase the laser emission power. For example, the 1550nm solution can significantly increase the emission power, but it consumes a lot of power, generates a lot of heat, and the 1550nm solution has high cost. This The direction does not meet the needs of the automotive market; the second is to improve the sensitivity of the receiving end and adopt high-sensitivity receiving solutions such as SIPM. The Sagitar Juchuang M3 also uses SIPM.