For the choice of automatic driving sensors, there are currently two different paths in the market. One is composed of the camera leading with low-cost components such as millimeter-wave radar; The other is led by the LIDAR, with the camera millimeter-wave radar and other components.

The camera's lightweight, low-cost, car-compliant features, high resolution, and frame rate mean it offers a wealth of environmental information, while the video data is closest to the environment perceived by the human eye. But 2d images from a camera are more difficult to mine than 3D information, requiring more powerful algorithms, massive data accumulation, and long-term research and development investment. In the selection of Level L4 automatic driving sensor, the pure vision solution will have limitations in precision, stability, and visual field, which cannot meet the performance requirements of advanced automatic driving for the sensor. The most obvious feature of the LIDAR-based automatic driving scheme is heavy perception and light calculation. The scheme of stacked LIDAR will appropriately reduce the requirement of computing power in the perceptual data processing link, thus speeding up the commercial deployment process of L4 autonomous vehicles. Therefore, although the current installation of LIDAR will greatly increase the cost of sensor solutions, LIDAR is indispensable for L4, which requires high safety and reliability, and it will be a better choice to exchange cost for safety.

From the perspective of the industrial chain, the link where LIDAR is located accumulates a lot of value and has strong industrial added value. LIDAR is the core component of downstream navigation, mapping, and other applications. At present, the shortage of production capacity leads to the shortage of supply, presenting a seller's market and having a strong pricing power for the downstream. Therefore, the main added value of this industry chain lies in the LIDAR part, and the overall profit space of the industry is relatively large.

Upstream: Overseas Monopoly of Core Components Is Obvious, And Domestic Self-Research Forces Emerge

The upstream mainly consists of four parts, namely, laser emission, laser receiving, scanning system, and information processing. In these four parts, a large number of optical and electronic components form the basis of LIDAR. The laser transmitting part includes laser and transmitting optical system, the laser receiving part includes receiving optical system and photoelectric detector, the laser scanning part includes MEMS micromirror in addition to the traditional rotating motor and scanning mirror, and the information processing part mainly includes amplifier, digital-to-analog converter and software algorithm. Upstream core components manufacturers, whether optical components or electronic components, involved in the processing and manufacturing of precision instruments and chips, are now basically monopolized by large foreign manufacturers.

Midstream: Solid-State Lidar Is Expected to Become the Protagonist of the Future Lidar Market

According to its structure, LIDAR is divided into mechanical LIDAR, hybrid solid-state LIDAR, and solid-state LIDAR. Using the traditional mechanical LIDAR, we not only have to face the problem of high loading cost but also have to face the safety risk and maintenance cost caused by the low stability of the product.

Solid-state Lidar is expected to become the protagonist of the future Lidar market, because the solid-state LIDAR can well solve the problem of high material cost and high mass production cost of mechanical LIDAR. Solid-state laser radar has the advantage that can minimize mechanical structure with wear and tear, but also eliminates the photoelectric device failure caused by the mechanical rotation may, its inherent characteristics make the interior of a radar layout more reasonable, make integral heat dissipation and stability compared with the mechanical laser radar has a qualitative leap.

Global Pattern: Velodyne Has Been Listed First, And the Domestic Market Is Bursting with Flowers

As a representative of the future autonomous driving core sensor, the LIDAR core technology is mainly mastered in Velodyne, Quanergy, and Ibeo, three foreign enterprises. Founded in 1983, Velodyne has an early start in mechanical LIDAR and advanced technology. At the same time, it has established partnerships with Google, general motors, ford, Uber, Baidu, and other global leaders in autonomous driving, and has occupied most of the market share of vehicle-mounted LIDAR. Velodyne has a strong presence in the mechanical LIDAR market, where it has a broad product portfolio. Velodyne is also poised for growth in the pre-installed solid-state LIDAR market. Founded in 2012, Quanergy launched its first product m8-1 in 2014, and it has been applied in experimental models of Mercedes-Benz, and Hyundai. After M8, Quanergy successively released products that started to follow the solid-state route and adopted OPA optical phased array technology, which will greatly reduce the price of sensors after mass production. Founded in 1998, Ibeo is the first company in the world to own vehicle-level LIDAR. In 2017, Ibeo launched the all-solid-state LIDAR A-SAMPLE prototype.

In recent years, after the rise of the wave of autonomous driving, some domestic LIDAR companies have also emerged simultaneously. Domestic enterprises such as Sagitar Juchuang, Hexai Technology, Beike Tianhua, and Radium Shen Intelligence have successively risen. The domestic market competition is fierce, showing a market pattern of a hundred flowers blossoming. In the early stage, domestic players were divided into two schools. One was established players such as the mechanical LIDAR and Velodyne, and the other was the solid-state LIDAR, which was directly targeted at the front-loading market after 2020.

Most of the new LIDAR vendors are selling for less than $1,000, with an average of five LIDAR per car and an estimated $5,000 per bike. Mechanical radars and solid-state radars will take different approaches to reducing their production costs. In the future, with the further popularization of autonomous driving technology, the LIDAR market scale will be further expanded, while the decline in the value of a single-vehicle will further facilitate the mass production and use of LIDAR. It is estimated that the global LIDAR market scale will exceed 10 billion in 2030. In terms of sales: it is estimated that the global LIDAR sales will be about us $1.295 billion in 2020, US $6.19 billion in 2025, and US $13.932 billion in 2030.

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