The first year of LiDAR's launch has arrived. How about the mass production of vehicle-mounted LiDAR?
Lidar Car Lidar

Lidar has gained the limelight in the past two years, and various financing and listing news have flooded in. 2020 is known as the "first year of autonomous driving." This year, overseas lidar companies ushered in a rush to go public. Including Velodyne, the inventor of real-time surround-view lidar, there are currently 5 lidar companies listed on the US stock market. Since the beginning of this year, many car companies at home and abroad have announced that they will mass-produce models equipped with lidar from the end of this year to the beginning of next year. Of course, as early as 2017, the Audi A8 was equipped with Valeo's four-line lidar for the first time, and mass production was achieved at the same time. Due to local regulations at the time or its own consideration of technological maturity, even in Audi's base camp in Germany, it was unable to use its declared L3 level automatic driving. Therefore, it can be understood that the A8 at that time only had an automatic driving station even after the lidar was selected. The required sensors, but the actual autonomous driving function has not been put on the mass market. For the "first year of LiDAR on the car", many people in the industry believe that two prerequisites need to be met: one is that there are practical applications of lidar; the other is that there are enough car manufacturers to use lidar. First of all, the current market acceptance of autonomous driving is very high. After recent years of development, L2 level of automatic assisted driving has almost been popularized in models with less than 150,000. Secondly, in addition to Tesla's insistence on using vision-based autonomous driving solutions, in terms of high-end autonomous driving technology, other manufacturers are basically taking the route of lidar. From the list of new cars of major car companies since this year, it is not difficult to find that the frequency of models equipped with lidar has begun to increase significantly. Domestic car companies have Weilai ET7, Xiaopeng P5, Polar Fox Alpha S, Huawei HI version, and WEY Mocha. , Zhiji L7, etc. Some models are also scheduled to be delivered within this year. This is also closely related to the efforts of lidar manufacturers. In 2006, when Velodyne launched the VLP-16, its price was as high as 100,000 yuan, and the higher line count HDL-64E was even close to 800,000 yuan. In 2018, Ouster reduced the 64-line lidar OS-1 of 800,000 yuan that year to less than 80,000 yuan. The entry of domestic manufacturers has further reduced the cost to the level acceptable to car companies. In January 2020, Sagitar announced the price of MEMS solid-state lidar RS-LiDAR-M1 at US$1898. Later they further revealed if the order is The quantity is between 100,000 and 1 million units, and the price will only drop to between 200-500 US dollars. In addition to price, an important factor affecting the launch of lidar is also the mass production capacity. Due to differences in technical routes and requirements for product consistency, the earliest real-time surround-view lidar was manually calibrated. Even in the form of mixed solid-state and all-solid-state, the production process is difficult to break through the difficulties of mass production. Judging from the current public information, the lidar used by automakers is mainly in hybrid solid-state forms, including MEMS galvanometers, rotating mirrors, prisms, and other solutions. This is also the first choice for mass-produced products.
Valeo SCALA series

The first mass-produced in-vehicle lidar is undoubtedly Valeo 1, which was already carried by the Audi A8 as early as 2017. SCALA1 uses a rotating mirror hybrid solid-state scanning solution, with an effective distance of 150 meters, a horizontal field of view angle of 145°, and a vertical field of view angle of 3.2°. Although the number of lines is only 4, this is the world's first vehicle certification certification Lidar.

Image source: valeo official website SCALA2, the follow-up product of SCALA1, was launched in 2019, and is expected to be mass-produced and equipped on Mercedes-Benz's new-generation S-class this year, and realize L3 level autonomous driving.
Livox HAP
On September 15 this year, Xiaopeng P5 was officially listed, and the official said it will start delivery at the end of October. Xiaopeng P5 is also the world's first smart car equipped with lidar and mass-produced. It is equipped with two Livox HAP lidars equivalent to 144 lines. Livox's current vehicle-mounted lidar uses a non-repetitive scanning method. The optical structure uses rotating prism-type hybrid solid-state technology to move all transmitting and receiving components to a stable rear end. Only two or three prisms are used at the front end for high-speed pure optics. scanning. While achieving equivalent 144 lines, 150m@10% ranging, FOV 120°×25°, resolution 0.2°×0.2° and other high parameters, it provides the possibility for technical stability.

Image source: Livox official website At the same time, the information on Livox official website shows that its own car-level intelligent manufacturing center has a planned area of ​​1,500 square meters in the first phase. The center has a fully automated lidar assembly line with an annual production capacity of 200,000 units. At the same time, it is equipped with several top global SMT production lines with a PPM (parts per million, usually representing a quality index) as low as 10, which can ensure the independent and efficient production of Livox lidar core components.
Sagitar Juchuang RS-LiDAR-M1
On August 19, Sagitar Juchuang announced the first batch of pre-installed fixed-point orders for mass production, and it has been delivered to a designated customer of a North American car company. It is said that Sagitar Juchuang's second-generation intelligent solid-state lidar RS-LiDAR-M1 (hereinafter referred to as "M1") has completed more than ten batches of deliveries since it started mass production and delivery in June this year. A number of models equipped with Sagitar M1 are also expected to be mass-produced and delivered between the fourth quarter of this year and the first quarter of next year, including the domestic GAC Aion LX, SAIC Zhiji L7, and overseas Lucid Air.

Image source: Sagitar Juchuang official website

In terms of production capacity, Sagitar Juchuang achieved the completion of China's first automotive-grade solid-state lidar in March this year. Benefit M1's modular design greatly reduces the complexity of the final assembly process and steps compared to the previous mechanical lidar. In the calibration phase, Sagitar JC developed a complete set of automatic calibration and performance testing equipment to ensure the high-level performance and point cloud quality of the lidar. It is understood that the fully automated calibration and machine performance testing solutions that Sagitar has introduced into the production line take 4-5 times less time than the manual solution, which greatly shortens the production cycle, while avoiding human uncertain factors and ensuring 100% accuracy. And consistency.
Huawei
Although Huawei only announced the entry of lidar at the end of last year, the Polar Fox Alpha S HI version equipped with Huawei lidar and autonomous driving solutions will also be mass-produced and delivered in the fourth quarter of this year. Changan Automobile is also preparing to use the new model architecture. Huawei lidar. It is understood that Huawei’s lidar adopts a micro-rotating mirror solution, equivalent to 96 lines, ranging from 150m@10%, FOV 120°×25°, resolution 0.2°×0.2°, and the initial planned production capacity reaches 100,000.

Innovusion

Innovusion's Aquila lidar will be carried on the Weilai ET7 in the first quarter of next year to achieve mass production and delivery. Aquila adopts a two-axis rotating mirror (BLDC+ bearing) structure, equivalent to 300 lines, FOV 120°×25°, angular resolution 0.06°×0.06°, and the longest distance measurement is 500m. As for the lidar products of companies such as Luminar, Velodyne, Innoviz, etc., most of them plan to achieve mass production within 2022 and be mounted on autonomous vehicles above the L3 level. From the perspective of mass production progress, hybrid solid-state lidar will be slightly ahead. Great Wall Motor announced that it will cooperate with Ibeo and will launch the first pure solid-state lidar ibeoNEXT with Flash technology on Great Wall Motors in the future, but the actual mass production time It has not been announced yet. But what is certain is that the first year of lidar has arrived.