Improve the layout of mechanical products and focus on the chip strategy. Founded in 2014, Hesai technology started with laser gas telemetry system in its early stage of entrepreneurship. In 2016, it shifted its research and development focus to lidar, focusing on unmanned driving and gradually expanding to the service Siasun Robot&Automation Co.Ltd(300024) field. It successively launched a variety of mechanical and semi-solid lidar products. Its partners include ideal, Jidu, Gaohe, lutes, Wenyuan Zhixing, Baidu, meituan, SAIC intelligent heavy truck, etc. At present, the company has completed 9 rounds of financing and raised more than 600 million US dollars in total. In the early stage of entrepreneurship, the company took “chipization” as the core strategy, established the chip department in 2017, laid out the special chips for lidar, developed and formulated a multi generation chipization development route, and the research and development contents include laser drive chips, analog front-end chips, digital chips and receiver SOC chips. At present, the multi-channel laser drive chip and multi-channel analog front-end chip have completed mass production, took the lead in the application of xt32 mechanical products and successfully carried on the new generation of meituan automatic distribution vehicle. At the same time, the company is also laying out SOC chips and all solid-state laser radar based on VCSEL array.
The technical route is 905nm VCSEL linear light source + one-dimensional rotating mirror. In the field of ADAS passenger cars, the company launched the semi-solid lidar at128 built in cooperation with lumentum in August 2021. The transmitting module integrates 128 independent lasers. By simultaneously emitting 128 lasers into the three-dimensional space and superimposing the horizontal one-dimensional rotating mirror, the point cloud is distributed evenly without splicing at the complete field angle in the horizontal and vertical directions, and the detection distance is up to 200m under 10% reflectivity, It is the industry’s first long-distance semi-solid product using VCSEL line light source. Compared with eel, the outstanding advantage of VCSEL is that the cost of large-scale manufacturing is lower, and its growth structure is easier to realize chip level two-dimensional accurate integration and high system redundancy. With the maturity of multi-layer junction technology, the defect of low luminous power density of VCSEL has been effectively improved, which can reach 1.5kw/mm2, and the gap with eel (20kw-30kw / mm2) has gradually narrowed from the original two orders of magnitude to 1 / 10 ~ 1 / 20. VCSEL sensing scheme has moved from consumer electronics to automotive applications. In the future, it is expected to accelerate its penetration into the vehicle lidar market by virtue of its cost and performance advantages.
At128 will be delivered in 22h2, and the planned capacity of the self built plant will reach one million units. In terms of production mode, most lidar companies tend to adopt the production mode of OEM or cooperation with manufacturers. The company tends to improve the control of production links and production costs by building its own factories. Therefore, the company chose to invest nearly US $200 million to build a million capacity plant with an area of about 70000 square meters to support the rapid growth of ADAS business. Up to now, at128 designated car enterprises, including ideal, Gaohe, Jidu and lutes, will start mass production in the company’s “Maxwell” super factory on 22h2.
Risk tips: 1) the risk that the penetration of lidar industry is less than expected; 2) There is a risk of major innovation in the technical route of lidar.
