Road surface observation is the most critical link for the vehicle to realize the automatic driving function. In order to realize this function, lidar has become the most core incremental sensor in 2022 and even longer.
On January 10, Yijing technology, another vehicle specification level MEMS lidar solution provider, announced the completion of hundreds of millions of yuan of pre-C round financing. It is reported that this round of financing is led by Xiaopeng automobile, Saic Motor Corporation Limited(600104) Shangqi capital, Dongfeng Bank of communications auto fund and old shareholder Intel Capital continue to be added.
The reporter of securities daily observed that the financing was only half a month after the lidar technology enterprise Suteng juchuang announced that it had obtained Byd Company Limited(002594) strategic investment and signed a strategic agreement on December 24, 2021. Nowadays, lidar boarding has become a general trend. Car enterprises are vigorously arranging the upstream and downstream of lidar and looting lidar manufacturers. At the same time, lidar has also become another hot field pursued by capital. From the development process of enterprises, most of them have entered the stage of accelerating mass production, and the support of capital further helps the mass production and loading of their products.
optimistic about the future
lidar applications are popular with car companies and capital
Since 2021, more and more car companies have designated lidar for new models, and take the performance coefficient of mass-produced models equipped with lidar as the typical highlight and selling point of new models. In the field of intelligent networked electric vehicles, lidar is growing into a new market increment.
In addition to Byd Company Limited(002594) and Xiaopeng, another representative enterprise of the new forces of car making, Weilai automobile also invested in tudaton, a lidar start-up company, through Weilai capital controlled by Li Bin. In January 2021, Weilai released a new model et7. It is reported that the model is equipped with lidar as standard, and designated tudaton, a lidar start-up company invested by Weilai capital. In fact, due to the high entry threshold of the front assembly market, the front assembly point and mass production are regarded as the primary indicators to judge the large-scale commercialization ability of vehicle specification level sensors.
After the fixed point, the next financing of tudaton has been widely sought after by primary market investors, and the valuation has also risen. In May 2021, tudaton announced that it had completed the round B financing of USD 64 million, which was jointly invested by Temasek, Bai capital and pleasure capital, and the old shareholders Wellcome capital, stone capital and fprime participated again.
It is understood that Weilai new NT2 All models of platform 0, including et5 and the upgraded es8, ES6 and ec6, are equipped with tudaton’s lidar as standard, which has a huge order guarantee for tudaton. Therefore, tudaton and strategic investor Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp(600699) have built a production line with an annual output of 100000 units in Ningbo. The model et7 with real standard lidar will be delivered on March 28, 2022.
In addition, according to the reporter’s observation, after Baidu, which has joined hands with Geely Automobile, announced the establishment of a car making brand set, its designated lidar manufacturer has also been selected as the lidar supplier Hesai technology invested by Baidu.
“For Party A with business in hand, it has become a common method in the field of venture capital to obtain capital income through equity investment before and after appointing a supplier with great development prospects.” A Chinese chip practitioner told reporters that for vehicle specification chip and lidar companies, investment is not equal to fixed-point, and fixed-point is not equal to investment. After persuading the investment department at the financing level, the next step is to deal with the procurement department at the product level. However, car companies are now competing for the automatic driving function, and the hardware stacking of lidar has become a trend.
More sensors on the bus has almost become the consensus of the industry. A person from a lidar manufacturer who asked not to be named disclosed to the Securities Daily that the automatic driving technology has brought greater market space for intelligent sensors, and also put forward requirements for sensors to be more intelligent and understand computing. For lidar company, with the investment of car enterprises, fixed-point and even stable shipment, it plays a great role in promoting the initial business.
giant collective entry
lidar will form a trillion level incremental market
For many practitioners of vehicle gauge sensors, 2021 can be described as an extraordinary year. On the one hand, the increasingly mature sensor suppliers realized the supply of vehicle specification products to Chinese automobile manufacturers last year; On the other hand, influenced by the current situation of the global chip shortage market, the vehicle specification level sensors achieved a huge growth in 2021. Some Chinese auto chip practitioners told the Securities Daily that the product sales in 2021 is roughly equivalent to the sum of sales in the past few years.
For lidar, a new component of intelligent networked electric vehicle, once it can successfully get on the bus and gain a firm foothold, it will form a huge incremental market. This is the reason why a large amount of capital poured into the lidar track in 2021, and also explains why Hesai can still be favored by top investors such as Xiaomi and Gaoling after being blocked in the sprint to the science and innovation board.
More and more automobile enterprises are willing to bind suppliers through equity investment and fixed-point methods. This is a great opportunity for lidar company, but there will be some risks. Gao Gaoren, a researcher of China automatic driving industry innovation alliance, said that some problems, such as the high proportion of revenue of a single major customer and the fixed-point exclusion of competitive car companies, will be singled out for review in the IPO process. In addition, with the rapid evolution of the industry, both car companies and lidar suppliers need to face potential technical routes and risks together.
Firstly, in terms of technical route, lidar is purely mechanical, MEMS Micro galvanometer, rotating mirror and OPA optical phased array. OPA belongs to pure solid-state lidar, which may become the ultimate solution for automatic driving in the future, and may be replaced by Tesla‘s pure vision solution. At present, due to the influence of technology maturity, the landing is far away.
At the same time, the lidar industry, giants are collective admission. Waymo, a self-developed lidar honeycomb of Google’s automatic driving company, has recently claimed to have won orders from many car companies based on its understanding of many years of deep cultivation in the field of automatic driving; Huawei continues to work hard on the road to becoming Tier1. It has announced that it has been developing lidar for two years, but it has not seen real products yet. It seems that it is holding back its “big move”; Dajiang, which deeply cultivated UAVs, operated independently after incubating livox internally, directly pulled the lidar of tens of thousands of dollars below the level of 10000 yuan. Although the giants started late, they all caught up.
According to the data, in 2020, the total global automobile sales reached 78.03 million, and China’s sales exceeded 25 million, excluding the field of commercial vehicles. Even if the cost of a car’s lidar is 10000 yuan, there will be a potential market of trillion yuan.
In superb’s view, the successful boarding and scale application of lidar are expected to appear this year. After the scale delivery of models equipped with lidar, it is necessary to prove the value of this expensive new parts, that is, it plays a role in the customer experience, and it has the stability and reliability of vehicle specification level. After that, the new part of lidar is bound to form a huge incremental market.
(source: Securities Daily)
