2023 of Chinese LiDAR Stubborn stupid kids

Visual China.

Text |HIEV Garlic Grain Vehicle Research Institute, author |d**id, edit |Wang Bo.

At the same time, lidar is also slowly becoming boring and boring in the questioning and challenge, which is an inevitable evolution to the manufacturing industry, and it is also the helplessness of the halo of science and technology gradually fading.

Since entering 2023, while the intelligent driving technology is advancing rapidly, the first battle in the automotive industry has not been terminated because of Tesla's price increase, but has intensified, resulting in more and more focused and pragmatic demands for the intelligent automobile industry chainCost reduction。While demanding performance and value improvement, we have repeatedly hammered the best business to reduce costs. The distorted market demand has caused the entire intelligent driving industry chain to fall into a dead cycle of involution, and the lidar industry has felt it deeply.

Nowadays, the most direct demand of car companies for lidar companies is no longer novel and unique perception solutions, but intelligent driving scenariosFeature Requirementswith FocusMass production stability。Simply translated into two questions: what value does it provide?How do you consistently deliver these values?

From January to November this year, the delivery results of vehicle-mounted lidarIt has exceeded 450,000 unitsAccording to the sales performance of core models, the total performance of LiDAR in 2023 is very likely to exceed the 600,000 mark. With the increase in the number of intelligent driving models and the rise in consumers' acceptance of the intelligent driving experience, lidar has gradually become a key sensor that affects the whole body from an early marketing gimmick, and there is no room for loss in both performance and reliability.

Today, a total of 5 domestic companies have realized the mass production and delivery of LiDAR vehicle specifications, and they are:Hesai Technology, Suteng Juchuang, Tudatong, Huawei, and Tanwei Technology

There are star companies in North American IPOs, giants in the industrial chain, and rising stars in the dark horse posture, and the further convergence and chill of the track, they are the most direct stakeholders in the front line, and perhaps only they can give the most accurate answer to the future of China's lidar.

Prior to 2019, Hesai and Sutar were the main competitors of Velodyne's big brother in North America and China, respectivelyFocus on the high-endL4 autonomous driving customers, Suteng pragmatic supremacy relies on low-cost 16-line products and high-speed response service qualitySweep the low-end market。With the cooperation of the two companies, Velodyne eventually lost the Chinese market, and the domestic manufacturer completely changed the market landscape of the lidar industry.

At the time, it seemed that the two companies were quite bitter about each other. But with Velodyne'sDefeatedHesai and Sutar inevitably began to go head-to-head.

In 2020, Suteng was the first to be releasedAutomotive gradeLiDAR M1, Hesai officially announced the AT128 harvest one year later;In 2022, Hesai officially announced the replacement of the blind product FT120, and a few days later, Sutar released the E1 with a similar positioning to the FT120. The competition between the two has intensified, and it has gradually become the current situation of intertwined dogs and teeth and not giving in to each other.

In the competition in recent years, it is Suteng who takes the lead. In 2021, Sutar's M1 was one of the few available automotive-grade lidars on the market at that time, and Sutar, which took the lead, gained in more than a yearDozens of fixed-point projects, becoming the "boss" of the lidar industry in one fell swoopMEMS technology roadmapIt has also become a mainstream scheme recognized by the industry.

Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and the sales of Xpeng Motors began to fall into a trough in 2022, the delivery of other fixed-point projects fell short of expectations, and the MEMS technical route also lost its "mainstream" aura due to frequent quality problems. At the end of 2022, Hesai and Tudatong respectively showed good delivery results, but Suteng avoided talking about it. Their hastily expanded production capacity has become a negative case in the industry for a period of time.

In 2023,Hesai Technology's IPO was listed on the U.S. stock market, and its industry influence was successfully out of the circle, its vehicle lidar sales have also benefited from the rise of ideals. However, the financial data of the public capital market has also exposed the imbalance between the sales volume and profit structure of lidar products. Subsequently, Hesai released it on the eve of this year's auto showet25, but this cutting-edge product is not expected to be delivered until 2025.

If the direction of Ideal and Xiaopeng is a preference of luck for Hesai and Suteng, Suteng will not be favored by the goddess of fate in the first half of 2023, and it will not be until the second half of the year that it will change. At the end of 2023, Xpeng Motors will have monthly sales of more than 20,000 due to the release of the G6 and the facelifted G9, and the question world equipped with Sutar LiDAR has also "come back to life" to hand over a report card with sales of more than 10,000 yuan, and even Zhiji Automobile has entered the public eye with the cost-effective LS6.

During this period, Suteng was launched one after anotherM1P vs. M2Two iterations of the product, but the sudden demand for orders does not seem to be directly related to its efforts, but more of a favor of luck.

This contrast actually runs through the entire lidar industry, Li Auto sells well because of the extended range and accurate positioning of family cars, and Xpeng Motors sells well because of the price reduction and profit to please consumers, It is difficult to say how much of the increase in sales is related to the lidar on the roof or in front of the car. If the happiness of Hesai and Suteng knocks on the door as a reward for hard work, then the risks and vulnerabilities behind this happiness still make the prospect of LiDAR look like walking on thin ice.

The Ideal L series MAX version is equipped with AT128 LiDAR.

Hesai Technology's financial reports for the first three quarters show that it is oriented to the non-vehicle marketMechanical LiDARIt is the main force to support revenue and profits, and although the AT128 that takes the ideal ship has good shipments, its contribution to revenue and profit is very limited. The same problem is also shown in Sutar's prospectus, although the official efforts to package part of the mechanical revenue as a "software solution" cannot hide the fact that the high losses are not covered.

The problem of Hesai and Suteng is also a microcosm of the problem of the entire industry, can LiDAR be cheaper and still profitable?

In the face of the demand of "cost reduction", the two high-end and pragmatic companies have rarely given similar solutionsThrough the layout of self-developed chips and the upstream and downstream of the cage industry, drawing the pie of "cost reduction" to 2025. In terms of specific products, in addition to the FT120 and ET25 products, which advertise a high-end image, Hesai also put a low-cost product solution based on AT128 in front of customers. Sutar has also further streamlined the transceiver device architecture in the M1P and M2 iterations of M1, so as to achieve thisSingle product profitabilitygoals.

Interestingly, in terms of future product planning, competitors who originally dissed each other have also picked up each other's "sharp weapons". Hesai's newly released ET25 uses a galvanometer scanning solution similar to that of the MEMS to meet the stringent size and NVH requirements of the cabin, and it is rumored that Sutar's next-generation product will also use a similar rotating mirror scanning solution to the AT128.

InBetter performance, lower cost, and higher reliabilityIn the face of the impossible triangle, competitors who were originally incompatible with water and fire began to choose the same goal. After the listing of Suteng Hong Kong stocks next year, the game between the two will be more exciting, and the melee of lidar in the vehicle market has just begun, and the king flag at the head of the city is fickle.

It is not only Hesai and Suteng that interact and change the technical route. Similar to Sutar,Yijing TechnologyInitially, it also entered the market from MEMS lidar, and it took the lead in opening batch orders from several customers with MEMS short-range blind lidar products. But by 2023, in long-distance products, Yijing TechnologyThe 1550nm route was abandoned, turn into the mainstream rotating mirror and 905nm, to create a fist product for long-distance forward perception, hoping to seize it on the eve of the closure of the on-board lidar trackLast ferry ticket

It is different from Hesai and Suteng, which are full of intertwined grievances and hatredsTudatong and Tanwei TechnologyFar from being so connected, the two companies are more like parallel lines on the banks of a great river, never intersecting, but mirroring each other, like their factories in Suzhou, which are only separated by a wall.

Tudatong was born in Silicon Valley, and the "300 line" products released in the early days did not make any waves in the industry. It can be said that before meeting NIO, Tudatong was only a second-echelon player in the industry, and few people would compare them with Hesai and Suteng, but the deep binding with NIO quickly opened the door for them to "get on the car", and thus completed a gorgeous turn among the first echelon.

NIO ET5T

Tudatong, which entered Weilai, once made players in the industry envious, especially for Tanwei Technology, which was founded in 2018, compared with Tudatong, which entered the game with a golden key, the late-developed Tanwei did not stand out until 2022The car company of Hechuang Automobile is fixed. Interestingly, Hechuang Automobile was born out of GAC NIO.

Start-ups die for life, and companies that can survive in the convergence period of the track naturally have their own unique places. Due to its late establishment, Tanwei has no experience in the mechanical lidar market, and its industry experience is naturally far inferior to that of Hesai and Suteng. But the strategic direction of the genesis team was clear and anchored from the startLow-cost hybrid solid-state solutionAnd the first to be delivered to the transportation market, so in terms of technology accumulation, it is not much behind the predecessors, and even took the lead in proposing".Hardware-level pre-image blending"Such a forward-looking perceptual fusion product.

Hechuang V09 comes to 2023, NIO's sales have begun to decline, and the 1550nm solution has hit a wall in other car companies one after another. Especially under the general trend of cost reduction,CostlyThe 1550nm route is becoming more and more difficult. At the same time, Tanwei, which was in the convergence period of the track, successively announced the news of Xiaomi's strategic investment and the mass production and delivery of the first vehicle-grade product, becoming one of the few companies that bucked the trend in the cold winter of the industry.

In order to broaden the boundaries of the on-board market, Tudatong began to move at the cost level, and at the Shanghai Auto Show, they released a series of "Lingque" products based on the 905nm route, covering the needs of forward perception and blind compensationIt has presented a radical strategy for major car companies。Tanwei Technology also released the "Light Change Plan" and new fixed-point projects during the auto show, and launched a new scope product series for blind filling needs in addition to on-board forward perception products, aiming at it"Performance" vs. "Cost".The two dimensions disclose the product layout and planning at the level of perception integration in the next 3-5 years.

The door of the vehicle-mounted lidar track is gradually closing, and the car companies in the past two years are still in the exploration period, and the products given by the lidar companies will give it a try. However, this year, the demands of car companies have changed significantly, mass production experience and low cost are the necessary admission tickets for the first business, without these two tickets, no matter how good the plan PPT is, it is difficult to win the opportunity to test.

There are in the industry5-6 homesAfter the LiDAR business that can meet the customized needs of car companies, no car companies are willing to accompany new players to go through the process of cultivating mass production solutions from 0-1The difficulty of a precision sensor like lidar from prototype to mass production of vehicle specifications is much more difficult than that from design to productization

The highly competitive in-vehicle market is doomed".Scale ProfitCost reduction and profitability are a long-term demand, and players involved in the game must have a short-term "blood return" plan. Seeing that Hesai and Sutar are making a lot of profits through mechanical products, Tudatong is also looking for its ownProfit HeightsLike Tanwei, they also found great value in traffic scenarios.

Different from the in-vehicle market, the transportation market is more tolerant of the cost and reliability of lidar, and some high-speed scenarios have more requirements for telemetry than vehicle-mounted. Tudatong and Tanwei Technology also further address the general lack of point cloud processing capabilities of intelligent transportation solution providers, package perception solutions based on traffic information management, and deliver software and hardware integration.

And that's not all,Tudatong's shipments in the intelligent transportation market** are 5 times that of the on-board marketJust as Hesai and Suteng have made high profits through mechanical lidar, Tudatong has also found its own profit "dessert area".

With the decline of L4 autonomous driving, mechanical lidar is already a stock market, but intelligent transportation is still in the incremental market of the project planning period, and a large number of intelligent high-speed and intelligent demonstration urban projects are implemented every year. It is foreseeable that in the next few years, the shipment of lidar in the transportation market will show a trend of small batch explosion, although the magnitude is far from the vehicle market, but it can provide timely blood supply to the long-suffering lidar manufacturers.

It's just that for Tudatong, the rich cake will never be left alone, away from NIO's greenhouse is not only a choice, but also a gesture for a broader market, if the Sparrow series can not win more business opportunities in the vehicle market, waiting for them is likely to return to the origin of everything.

Also for Tanwei, the disclosure of Hesai's financial report and the release of Suteng's prospectus made people aware of itGet in the car"The ferry ticket is notAmulet。A few fixed-point projects do not prove the viability and sustainable development and monetization of lidar companies. While continuing to catch up with the leader, Tanwei will continue to face more severe pressure to reduce costs.

The "battle royale" on this ship has only just begun.

After DJI (Livox) and Bosch announced that they would abandon the development of automotive lidar, Huawei and Valeo becameThere are only two in the worldA giant company that is also developing and producing lidar. Unlike the startups mentioned above, their investment in lidar is often more pragmatic and focuses more on practical application value.

Among them, although Valeo did it early, it still can't get rid of the single role of lidar producer. Huawei is the only company in the worldAs a manufacturer and user of lidarThe two roles, self-production and self-use, completely closed-loop demand management can often tap the value that other competitors cannot tap in the value exploration stage of LiDAR.

Thanks to the advantages of self-production, self-development and self-use, Huawei has taken the lead in the industry to implement the "pre-fusion" perception technology solution of image and laser point cloud, giving lidar data higher perception permissions, so as to play a greater role in the scene, which is also the main reason why AVATR and Wenjie have always been among the best in the competition test of many intelligent driving functions.

In November 2023, Huawei announced the autonomous parking and pick-up of passengers of the Zhijie S7 model, which is currently expected to be realized in the environment of lack of map information in the underground garage and poor lighting conditionsL4 level **p function, LiDAR is almostThe only solution。Only a company like Huawei, which is highly integrated from perception hardware to intelligent driving solutions, can make a breakthrough in the application value of LiDAR.

At the same time, Huawei's business model has gradually shifted from a monopolistic tier-1 model to an open ecological cooperation, continuously attracting capital injection from car companies, and sharing their technological achievements in the field of intelligent driving with a more open attitudeRemove "soul" ownershipThis will inevitably drive the entire automotive industry to establish a new understanding of the application of lidar.

In Huawei's intelligent driving solution, lidar and high-end intelligent driving functions are:Strong bindingsstatus. Therefore, with its strong brand influence, Huawei can not only lead the R&D, production and application exploration of lidar, but also affect the sales of models equipped with lidar to a certain extent, which is an ability that other lidar manufacturers cannot reach.

While other friends still want to look up to the sales of "Wei Xiaoli" and formulate production capacity plans, Huawei can carry lidar on its ownQuestion M7To create a phenomenal hit product, this is really an unfair comparison.

Of course, even Huawei's size cannot cover the customized performance requirements of the LiDAR market, but its "catfish effect" can quickly broaden and enhance the value and status of LiDAR in intelligent driving functions, thereby bringing huge benefits to the entire industry.

The development of the lidar industry for more than ten years has changed from a cutting-edge technology product with the halo of Silicon Valley on its head to a part of the automobile manufacturing industry. The rapid shift in roles fueled by the industry has masked a lot of problems, creating a sharp contrast between fast-growing market data and long-standing skepticism

As a practitioner and observer, what I feel and see is that we have just solved the performance requirements of autonomous driving, and we will start to solve the stability needs of mass production of vehicle specifications in the second year, and we will begin to face the torture of value and cost reduction in the third year, which is really unfair for an industry that has been mature for less than 20 years from birth to maturity.

Of course, the business world is never absolutely fair. In 2013, a 64-line lidar sold for $100,000, which people said was too expensive. In 2023, a 192-line lidar will only need to be soldYuan, people still say it's too expensive.

Before Tesla crashed into the big white truck at high speed in North America in 2016, people said that pure vision was the end of perception. In 2023, after Tesla's more than 200 "out of control" accidents, people still say that pure vision is a better solution.

In 2022, autonomous driving will encounter a cold winter, and people say that the automotive specifications of lidar are far away and are about to lose the largest market. In 2023, the sales of automotive lidar will approach the 600,000 mark, and people are still telling me, let's talk about how the lidar industry came to the edge of the cliff.

Shared mobility, metaverse, smart glasses, ......In the countless technology bubbles, LiDAR is like a stubborn stupid child, breaking one doubt after another for more than ten years, constantly creating achievements that make traditional industries look sideways, and never mentioning who to replace, but constantly suffering from the harsh criticism and challenges of "being eliminated", "being replaced" and "being surpassed".

Li Yifan, CEO of Hesai Technology, jokes that every day when he wakes up on his phone, 99 of the 100 WeChat messages he calls ask what he thinks of pure vision. Wang Shiwei, CEO of Tanwei Technology, also joked that 100 questions are asked every day, 50 of which are what they think about pure vision, and 50 of which are about 4D millimeter wave.

Chauvinist advocates of pure vision complain about the lack of accuracy of lidar, but ignore the 4D millimeter wave, which is less than a quarter accurate of lidar. While cost-first theorists are judging lidar, they don't care about the geometry of the seats, refrigerators, and large color TVs in the car.

The current demand distorts the intelligent battlefield, onlyThe remnant is king

Performance and cost, which are contrary propositions in every technology industry, have become the basic logic of people torturing lidar again and again. And the CEOs and engineers of this industry can only come up with products with better performance and lower performance again and again, and then quietly send them to customers, explaining everything with point clouds.

What a bunch of stubborn stupid kids.