What are the domestic consumer-grade LiDAR manufacturers? Which one is doing better?
Top 10 domestic LIDAR suppliers
LIDAR is a sensor that uses laser light to achieve accurate ranging, which can be broadly regarded as a camera with 3D depth information, and is known as the "robot's eyes".
Lidar industry since its inception, closely follow the development of the underlying devices at the forefront, showing a high level of technology is a prominent feature. From the invention of the laser at the beginning of the single-point LiDAR to the later single-line scanning LiDAR, as well as in the unmanned vehicle technology to obtain a widely recognized multi-line scanning LiDAR, and then to the technical solutions continue to innovate solid-state LiDAR, FMCW LiDAR, as well as in recent years toward the chip, array continued to develop, LiDAR has always been a representative of the development of emerging technologies and applications.
In 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission for the first time official clear "new infrastructure" seven plates, LiDAR as a terminal sensor equipment, in the field of autonomous driving, vehicle and road co-operation and other intelligent transportation, smart city role continues to highlight. The Chinese government's support for autonomous driving will also play a positive role in promoting the development of the global LiDAR industry.
According to Sullivan's statistics and forecasts, the global market size of LiDAR will be $13.54 billion by 2025, which can realize a CAGR of 64.5% compared with 2019. China LiDAR market size will reach USD 4.31 billion by 2025, realizing a CAGR of 63.1% from 2019.
The global market for LiDAR has gradually opened up in recent years, and overseas vendors have the advantage of leading in both upstream and midstream, and are ahead of domestic vendors in terms of technology and customer base. Foreign LiDAR technology began to try to apply to ADAS assisted obstacle avoidance and navigation programs as early as 2010. As a representative of the core sensors for future autonomous driving, the core technology of LiDAR is mainly mastered in Velodyne, Quanergy, Ibeo three foreign enterprises.
The United States Velodyne was founded in 1983, its mechanical LiDAR started earlier, leading technology, and at the same time with Google, General Motors, Ford, Uber, Baidu, and other global automated driving leaders to establish a cooperative relationship, occupying the majority of the market share of the vehicle LiDAR.
Quanergy was founded in 2012, launched its first product M8-1 in 2014, and in Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and other companies to get the application of the experimental models, M8 after Quanergy successive releases of the product are beginning to take the solid-state route, the use of the OPA optical phased-array technology, the size of the mass production will significantly reduce the sensor price.
Ibeo, founded in 1998, is the world's first company to have automotive-grade LiDAR, which launched its all-solid-state LiDAR A-Sample prototype in 2017.
But domestic manufacturers have risen to the occasion in recent years, making many breakthroughs, and the Chinese force is gradually rising.
Domestic players are divided into two schools of thought in the early days, a class of research and development of mechanical LiDAR and Velodyne and other veteran players to grab the market, and the other class is directly locked solid-state LiDAR products.
Domestic LiDAR field currently has nearly 50 entry, the development direction is not limited to the automotive industry. The identity of the players is more complex, there are star startups such as Wo Sai, Suteng, Radium God, etc., but also cross-border Huawei, DJI, there are older qualifications, such as the North Wake, North Tech Sky Painting, National Science and Technology Optical Core, as well as some up-and-comers, such as Luo Wei, Tanwei, optical spoon, and so on. Many startups are followed by tech giants and international Tier1s. Overall, the domestic market is highly competitive, showing a blossoming market pattern.
GaoGong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, based on the domestic LiDAR vendors' technology reserves, differentiation advantages, the process of front and rear mounted mass production projects, and market exposure and other factors, for the first time comprehensively released the annual brand influence of LiDAR suppliers TOP10 enterprise list.
Photo source: GaoGong Intelligent Automobile
YiDiao Technology
YiDiao Technology (zvision), founded in November 2017 and headquartered in Beijing, is a hi-tech company focusing on the development of all-solid-state LiDAR products and technologies.
Since its inception, the company has raised three rounds of financing, with investors including Mingshi Capital, Inno Angel Fund, Zhenyun Venture Capital, Cloud Angel Fund, Dongke Chuangxing, Fosun Ruizheng Capital, and Songhe Capital.
As one of the first companies in China to announce the mass production process, YDT has entered into a strategic cooperation with Yingcher Technology on the commercialization of self-driving solutions for trucks in the dry logistics sector, and has become a supplier of MEMS LIDAR for the mass production of Yingcher Technology, and its newest ML series LIDAR will be supplied to Yingcher Technology's self-driving models in the dry logistics sector for the mass production of trucks.
At present, Yingcher has already started the L3 mass production cooperation project with the domestic leading heavy truck OEMs, and has completed the first L3 heavy truck A prototype in the field of self-driving trucks, and will take the lead in realizing L3 mass production by the end of 2021. Considering that the requirements for on-board sensors in the truck field are higher than those for passenger cars, it also means that the domestic LiDAR can fully meet the requirements for large-scale on-board applications.
July 2020, a path of technology Changshu factory landing, marking the car-grade scale mass production officially opened. The first phase of Changshu factory investment totaled 102 million yuan, the goal of the world's first annual capacity of 50,000 units of automotive-grade MEMS LiDAR.
In addition, a path of science and technology with the world's top automated driving companies, automobile OEMs signed a cooperation agreement, the main customers are GM, Ford, Geely and Trinity and other companies, the current mass production landing the main direction of the overall LIDAR solution to the specific area of the various scenarios related to the vehicle, such as high-speed logistics, smart mining, smart ports, smart parks, intelligent public transportation, Robotaxi, etc.
Wo Sai Technology
In recent years, Wo Sai Technology, which has been rapidly occupying the main share of the autonomous driving test market in recent years, has on January 7, 2021, filed a prospectus to be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board to raise 2 billion yuan, and is expected to be the first listed company in the country to take LIDAR as its main business.
Hosai Technology was founded in 2013 in San Jose, Silicon Valley, and moved its headquarters to Shanghai in 2014. The company's main business is to develop, manufacture and sell high-resolution 3D LiDAR and laser gas sensor products. Among them, LIDAR for broad robotics applications is the company's core product.
WoSai's founder and chairman, Kai Sun, graduated from Stanford University's Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering; founder and chief executive officer, Yifan Li, has a bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois; and founder and chief technology officer, Shaoqing Xiang, has a master's degree in both electrical engineering and mechanical engineering from Stanford University.
WoSai's products include Pandar40, Pandar40P, Pandar64, PandarQT, Pandar128, and Pandora, a multi-sensor fusion sensing suite for unmanned vehicles; PandarGT for advanced assisted driving; PandarMind for connected car applications; and PandarMind for the robotics market. ; PandarXT for the robotics market, and more.
Since its inception, WoSai Technology has gone through five rounds of financing, with a cumulative amount of nearly 1.5 billion yuan, and the most recent financing totaled 173 million U.S. dollars (about 1.13 billion yuan), which set a new record for the highest single financing in the LiDAR industry. Investors include Baidu, Bosch, Zhenge Fund, ON Semiconductor and others.
RAMSONIC
RAMSONIC, founded in 2015 and headquartered in Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province, is the only LIDAR company in the world that has mastered four measurement methods, including TOF time-of-flight, phase, triangulation, and FM continuous wave, and has built a more complete LIDAR matrix, based on which it proposes a total solution for different industry software. The overall solution for different industry software, covering nine industrial ecosystem applications such as autonomous driving, intelligent transportation, rail transportation, robotics, logistics, mapping, security, ports and industrial automation.
Since its inception, RAMSON has raised five rounds of financing from Northern Light Venture Capital, China Merchants Capital, Shaanxi Hongchuang, Ru Shan Capital, Dachen Caixin, Fortune Capital, Ren'ai Zhihui, Ejin Capital, Xinye Fund and Tongwei Capital.
RAMSON is one of the few LIDAR companies in China that has entered into strategic cooperation with OEMs. The company has entered into a strategic cooperation with Shaanxi Automobile Holding, aiming at the research and development of automotive-grade LIDAR and commercial vehicle front-end mass production projects.
In addition, Shaanqi Holdings' fund is also one of the investors in Radium Intelligence, and considering that Shaanqi's heavy trucks are ranked in the top domestic heavy truck sales (ranked fourth in 2019), there is a huge space for future market imagination.
Earlier, the company was also successfully selected by the National Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the new generation of artificial intelligence industry innovation key tasks to carry out 128-line hybrid solid-state LiDAR technology research.
At present, RAM has R&D layouts in MEMS, Flash and OPA, the three mainstream solid-state LiDAR technology routes.
RAMSON is the only LIDAR company in China that has independently developed a 16-channel TIA chip for LIDAR, an automated and semi-automated production line for LIDAR, and 1550nm fiber lasers, and the company's products include automotive-grade 128-wire, 32-wire, and 16-wire hybrid solid-state LIDARs.
RAMSON's MEMS solid-state LiDAR LS20B has been greatly simplified by its core technologies and innovative processes, such as MEMS micro-mirror and 16-channel TIA chip, and the efficiency of the whole machine assembly has been greatly improved; its farthest range can be as far as 300m, and it possesses a rich point cloud and a fine angular resolution; and it adopts the front-end design of the car, which can be embedded in the front end of the car and the car body directly. Perfect integration, not only simplify the installation, taking into account the aesthetic, but also reduce the complexity of the fusion algorithm of multiple sensors, greatly saving the vehicle transformation costs; its price is $999 (about 6998 yuan) to $1299 (about 8998 yuan).
In addition, in the vehicle-road coordination market, RadiumSense currently provides LiDAR vehicle-road coordination solutions have been landed in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Suzhou, Chongqing, Zhengzhou, Xuchang and other cities.
Daji Livox(Viewvo)
Livox (Viewvo), which was incubated by drone giant DJI Technology, was founded in 2016, and can be said to be one of the most successful companies in the domestic LIDAR field this year. Domestic LiDAR field of a "price" dark horse. Thousand-dollar low-cost LiDAR has become the focus of market attention, Horizon's price of $ 800, Tele-15's price of $ 1,200, creating a new high cost-effective LiDAR.
However, the company's innovative non-repetitive scanning technology has yet to be validated by the automotive industry, with the benefit of maximizing coverage but differing from traditional technology routes in rapid scene feature extraction and matching.
Taking the Horizon product as an example, it can be equivalent to a 64-line mechanical LiDAR within 0.1 seconds of scoring time. According to market feedback, in low-speed scenes, the effect is better, but because it is a single-line scanning mode, the effect of medium and high-speed scenes is general.
Since then, Livox has introduced Mid-70 for close-range blind spot detection and Avia for improved long-range detection, the latter of which can be switched between different scanning modes (with the addition of a new repeating line-scanning mode), ranges and different scenes.
To meet the needs of different operating scenarios, the Livox Avia offers two scanning modes (one being the previous non-repeating scanning), both capable of firing multiple high-speed scanning laser beams simultaneously at a point-cloud data rate of 240,000 dots/second.
However, backed by a big tree, with DJI's strong supply chain, management, procurement and production system, Livox's ability to reduce costs in mass production is unquestionable, especially since non-vehicle-grade products can be sold through DJI's drone channel. Moreover, the price and the possibility of large-scale mass production are the biggest competitive advantages of EVO Technology.
In addition, Livox has chosen to open up its dataset and open-source algorithms to help its customers lower their development thresholds, taking into account the needs of downstream customers for LIDAR's point cloud processing and related software.
Livox has cooperated with Xiaopeng, some Tier 1s, OEMs and total solution providers: L4 passenger cars with AutoX; L4 commercial vehicles with CiDi; and low-speed unmanned robots with Gaussian Robotics, a deep strategic partner. In low-speed unmanned robots, EVO Technology has reached a deep strategic partner Gaussian Robotics (Gaussian Robotics) to purchase more than 10,000 units of LiDAR. In the new production Xiaopeng P5 model launched in 2021, will be equipped with Xiaopeng customized version of vehicle-grade LiDAR based on Horiz vehicle-grade LiDAR.
Its partners also include SAIC-GM-Wuling, Dongfeng Motor Corp. and Tucson Future, and its products have been sold to 26 countries and regions, including the U.S., Canada, China, Japan and the European Union.
RoboSense
RoboSense was founded in 2014 and is based in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province. The founder, Chunxin Qiu, studied for a doctorate at the School of Mechatronics and Automation at Harvard University before starting his own business, and the predecessor of RoboSense was Chunxin Qiu's Outdoor Mobile Robotics Environment Perception Group.
Speed Teng Jutron has built its business around LiDAR environmental sensing solutions, and has made achievements in a number of core technology areas, including chips, LiDAR sensors, and AI algorithms. Its core products include MEMS solid-state LiDAR system technology solutions, mechanical series LiDAR system technology solutions, and its customers include autonomous driving technology companies, automotive companies, and tier-one suppliers.
Since its establishment, Sutton has experienced 8 times of financing, and the investors include Oriental Fortune, Puhe Capital, Kun Promotion Capital, Fosun Ruizheng Capital, Haitong New Energy, Beiqi Industry Investment Fund, Cainiao Network, Shang Chip Capital, Zhonghe Ruimin, Xinye Fund, Kang Chengheng Investment, Guotou Chuangfeng and so on.
Speed Teng Polytron is one of the earliest companies involved in the automotive LiDAR market in China, initially focusing on the robotics market, and is one of the main suppliers of low-linear-count LiDAR in China. Early Rookie network, SAIC, BAIC strategic investment, a moment of glory.
The company's LiDAR was mounted on Cainiao network unmanned logistics vehicle G Plus, then called the "hump" unmanned logistics program claimed to build 100,000 unmanned equipment within three years. But since then, the network has experienced a round of internal adjustments, the Dharma Institute to take over the unmanned logistics research and development and landing, the subsequent development remains to be seen. At the same time, the company is also involved in patrol robots, AGV, intelligent logistics and other fields, the market front further stretched.
Currently, Sutem Polytron has launched five product lines, namely mechanical LiDAR RS-LiDAR-16, RS-LiDAR-32, RS-Ruby, RS-Bpearl and solid-state LiDAR RS-LiDAR-M1.
The MEMS galvanometer is the most core device in RS-LiDAR-M1, and Sutem Polytron has designed *** ten sets of validation tests covering all aspects of validation such as temperature, humidity, packaging process, EMC, mechanical vibration/shock, and lifetime. Currently, all test samples have accumulated more than 100,000 hours of test time.
At the online CES2021 in January 2021, Sprint Polytron demonstrated the mass production version of its latest automotive-grade, high-performance MEMS solid-state LiDAR RS-LiDAR-M1, which was shipped in volume in December 2020, making it the world's first automotive-grade MEMS solid-state LiDAR to be delivered in volume.
Luminwave Technology
Founded in January 2018 and headquartered in Hangzhou with branches in Xi'an and Los Angeles, U.S.A., Luminwave Technology (Luminwave) is a company focusing on the research of 3D sensors and corresponding hardware/software platforms to support them, and the company has been working on the research of 3D sensors and corresponding hardware/software platforms through machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, and is dedicated to the development and production of chip-scale integrated photonic and electronic integrated circuits.
In August 2020, the company received tens of millions of dollars of angel round investment from CSCI and Fengrui Capital, which will be mainly used for the development of pure solid-state imaging-grade LiDAR chips and LiDAR modules based on CMOS silicon photonics.
At present, Luminwave's first-generation pure solid-state imaging LiDAR based on OPA solution has been developed and samples have been provided to auto-pilot customers, and MicroLiDAR has entered mass production and started to provide bulk supply for consumer electronics and other customers.
Luminwave's self-developed silicon-optical OPA chip and optical solution provides a resolution of up to 200 lines, which is much higher than that of other types of LiDARs currently on the market. At the same time, because of the use of chip program effectively control the cost of LiDAR, can be reduced to a few hundred dollars level of the cost of the whole machine.
MicroLiDAR's first product is the world's smallest size based on the 3D ToF principle of gesture recognition sensors LW-FS8864 series, which the company launched earlier this year, and at the same time can provide support for deep learning AI algorithms for gesture/posture recognition applications.
Pure solid-state LiDAR applications in both autonomous driving and consumer electronics will drive a new round of smart industry upgrades, and Luminwave's two main product lines will cover both of these two hottest application areas.
Huawei
Huawei is currently the world's first publicly announced involvement in the field of LIDAR communications giant, but in fact Huawei into the field of LIDAR production should be considered unintentional, the original Huawei just want to cooperate in this piece of hardware and suppliers, their own development of the software system, but one of the domestic suppliers of technology is immature. Secondly, international manufacturers do not sell state-of-the-art products, and therefore changed to self-developed hardware.
Huawei LiDAR project started in 2016, after more than 4 years of research, scene analysis, clear requirements, design and development, vehicle regulation level verification, 96 lines of LiDAR has been pushed to the production line, the annual production capacity of 100,000 sets / line. Huawei has an optoelectronic technology research center in Wuhan, totaling more than 10,000 people, which is developing LIDAR technology, with the goal of rapidly developing a 100-line LIDAR in the short term. In the future, the plan is to reduce the cost of LiDAR to $200, or even $100, so as to meet the demanding cost requirements of front-loading mass production.
Huawei's MEMS hybrid solid-state LiDAR released on December 21, 2020, uses 905nm lasers with a resolution of 96 lines, has a full-vision scene of 150 meters of ranging capability, a large field of view of 120 ° x 25 °, to meet the urban area, high speed and other scenes of people, vehicle ranging needs; full field of view, the horizontal and vertical beams of lines are uniformly distributed, there is no splicing, jitter and other situations
Data Ready
Data Ready is a video ready solution for your PC.
In Huawei's release of LiDAR on the same day, BAIC's ARCFOX Extreme Fox HBT spy photos were exposed, becoming the first equipped with Huawei's LiDAR electric car; in addition, Chang'an Automobile has also revealed that it will join hands with Huawei, Ningde Times to create a new high-end intelligent car brand, most likely in the first car equipped with Huawei's LiDAR.
Based on Huawei's strength in the central domain controller MDC layout, breaking the strong coupling relationship between the traditional ECU and the sensor, for the domestic LiDAR quickly into the mass production stage is a new tactical play.
At the same time, taking into account the future of Huawei's cell phone once also began to use similar to Apple's consumer-grade LiDAR, will be for the car LiDAR business to produce a certain collaborative effect.
In addition, the news that Huawei plans to assign the intelligent car BU to the consumer BG, the overall structure and business logic level has been in the planning. This point, the future and DJI technology is very similar, the same product line can simultaneously cover the industrial, consumer and automotive grade, maximize R & D efficiency and output.
Wanji-Tech
Wanji-Tech is the only listed company among the top 10 companies on this list. The company had announced in June 2020 that it proposed to raise up to 900 million yuan of capital, which involves the use of low-cost, miniaturized LiDAR research and development and mass production for self-driving cars.
The company started with single-line LiDAR, and two years ago began small-volume trial production of 8-line and 32-line LiDAR. Vehicle-road collaboration is one of the company's main footholds due to its customer and project strengths in the intelligent transportation sector.
Meanwhile, previously the company in the field of warehousing, robotics has got a number of navigation and obstacle avoidance single line LiDAR project orders. Subsequently, vehicle-mounted LiDAR and V2X are its main market directions for the smart connected car industry.
Sensitech
Sensitech, as a newcomer to the LiDAR field, has previously achieved a leading domestic share in the front-mounted millimeter wave radar market. Backed by Hikvision, the company began deploying LiDAR R&D a few years ago.
Early on, Hikvision's security, robotics and intelligent transportation business will become a direct beneficiary of Sensitech's LiDAR business. At the same time, with the millimeter-wave radar front-loading mass production experience, is conducive to accelerate the automotive market introduction.
In addition, has begun construction of a total investment of 800 million yuan of Hikvision Shijiazhuang Science and Technology Park (which includes Sensitech), plans to build 20 fully automated production lines and assembly lines within five years, the annual production capacity is expected to reach 10 million units, the construction of professional millimeter-wave and Lidar test room more than 20.
Following, millimeter wave radar and LiDAR production capacity will cover driverless/vehicle safety, intelligent transportation, intelligent parking, safe city/security monitoring, road gate control and other fields.
Tanwei Technology
Wang Shiwei, founder and CEO of Tanwei Technology, is a PhD from the Department of Precision Instrumentation at Tsinghua University and a visiting scholar at the University of Arizona in the U.S., with many years of experience in research on precision optical measurements and micro-nano fabrication, and worked at the China Academy of Information and Communication Research, where he participated in the development of a number of national standards for in-vehicle equipment.
The company chose to specialize in solid-state LiDAR from its inception in 2017, when it began developing the Tensor series of LiDAR. In April this year, Tensor-Pro solid-state LiDAR products from Tantive have completed mass production, completing the delivery of thousands of units one after another, and the annual output has reached 5,000 units.
By the end of this year, Tensor-Pro plans to start delivering its next-generation, high-resolution solid-state LiDAR products, the Scope series, to customers, with a resolution of up to 64x1200, a range of up to 300 meters, an accuracy of 2 centimeters, and a field of view of 25x120 degrees.
Conclusion:
The development of LiDAR will promote the development of driverless technology and ADAS in the automotive industry, and will also increase the scope of application and popularity of service robots. In the future, with the further popularization of autonomous driving technology, LiDAR market size will be further expanded, and the decline in the value of a single vehicle will further facilitate the use of LiDAR mass production.
With the gradual popularization of artificial intelligence, 5G technology, unmanned driving, ADAS, service robots and Telematics and other aspects of the demand to promote the overall market for LiDAR is expected to show a high-speed development trend.
With the high-speed development situation corresponds to, right now, the global LiDAR industry is also experiencing a round of capital boom, but from the point of view of the financial situation of these startups, the short-term hope of profitability is not big.
For example, Wo Sai Technology's prospectus also clearly states that as of the end of September 2020, Wo Sai Technology's cumulative unrecovered losses at the consolidated level amounted to 38,738,500 yuan, and predicts that maintaining high R&D investment will be the norm in the coming period, which means that Wo Sai Technology may continue to lose money in the future.
Kyle Vogt, co-founder and president of Cruise, GM's self-driving subsidiary, said, "There's an interesting thing happening right now in the LiDAR industry. Their value is based on completely overlapping potential customers and the projected revenues those customers bring in, and everyone's projections for the future are almost always very idealized."
In this regard, Automotive Business Review believes that LIDAR's recent widespread attention is closely related to its improved performance, adaptability and significant price reductions, but whether automotive-grade, high-performance LIDAR, will achieve mass use in production vehicles in the near future could be the key to determining the fate of LIDAR companies focusing on the automotive sector.
Sensor Expert
Reference source:
"List released! Domestic LiDAR TOP10", by GaoGong List
"An article on LiDAR industry chain, competitive landscape and major players", by Laser Industry Insight
"Automotive LiDAR, the dark night before the dawn, or the bubble before the shuffle? by Yaguang Qian