Specialist
Senior executive at Innovusion Holdings Ltd
Agenda
- Lidar application scenarios, highlighting autonomous driving and smart transportation, plus market potential and growth trends
- Competitive landscape among major Chinese and international lidar companies – product and solutions technology comparison, product update, technology evolution and indicators
- Lidar production and manufacturing industry chain, components and raw materials, production costs and time frame, plus pricing
- Major players’ mass production plans, capability and difficulties, order sources and auto manufacturers’ vehicle-mounted lidar selection criteria
- Major players’ core advantages and disadvantages, plus development strategies
Questions
1.
According to the Cybersecurity Review Measures (Revised Draft for Comment) (网络审查安全办法(修订草 案征求意见稿)), Chinese enterprises that have more than one million registered users must go through cybersecurity review if they want to go public overseas. Are lidar companies subject to cybersecurity review and other regulations regarding data collection and processing?
2.
What are the main application scenarios for lidars across different downstream industries, including autonomous driving, smart transportation and smart city? What are the application scenarios for vehicle mounted and roadside lidars? How have the shipment volumes of major types of lidars and the sizes of corresponding market segments increased over 2018-19?
3.
You said that ADAS, smart city and smart transportation are the most promising application scenarios for lidars. You also said that the average unit price of lidars used for ADAS is about USD 7,000. What about the type and unit price of lidars used for smart city and smart transportation projects? Can you predict the total shipment volume of lidars in 2021 and the growth trends in the future?
4.
Did you just say that the average unit price of lidars for ADAS is expected to be USD 1,000 in the future?
5.
What are the differences between vehicle-mounted and roadside lidars in terms of technical requirements and production techniques? Do players prefer to start with vehicle-mounted lidars and then shift to roadside lidars? Or is it just the other way around? Are players trying to develop solutions for various application scenarios? Or do they just focus on a particular application scenario?
6.
You mentioned that Luminar might reduce the price of solid-state lidars from tens of thousands USD to USD 500-1,000 by replacing some materials of the receivers. Would you please introduce it in detail? Will that replacement influence the lidars’ overall performance or other parameters? Can Luminar keep the device’s good performance after that replacement? Someone may doubt its lidars are not pure solid-state but semi solid-state. What do you think about it?
7.
According to the transmission and scanning models, solid-state lidars can be categorised into three types: Flash, MEMS (micro-electromechanical system) and OPA (optical phased array). The former two are relatively mature with launched products. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the current mainstream solid state lidars? What are the strengths, weaknesses and core application scenarios of semi-solid-state and mechanical lidars?
8.
What are the respective advantages and disadvantages of the aforesaid three technology routes?
9.
Why are you pessimistic about the general technologies of solid-state lidars? What are the lidars’ significant weaknesses that can’t be strengthened through technologies in the short term?
10.
Will mechanical lidars be phased out in the future? Or will they be applied in some application scenarios such as floor-cleaning robots? In which other application scenarios will mechanical lidars be applied?
11.
What about the application scenarios and commercialisation of time-of-flight (ToF) cameras in the lidar market, in particular the autonomous driving segment? Some say that ToF cameras enjoy good prospects, and others say that they can simply measure a distance of 20 metres which cannot reach the safety distance between vehicles. What’s your opinion on ToF cameras?
12.
You just said that Luminar might lower the price of its lidars to USD 1,000. I’m citing a media report that after it replaced silicon detectors with InGaAs detectors, it increased the cost, but after it acquired Black Forest Engineering of which ASIC can realise better photon efficiency and dynamic range, its cost dropped to USD 3 from tens of thousands of USD, but it hasn’t yet conducted mass production. Is it possible for Luminar to drop its cost to USD 3 from tens of thousands of USD? How can it realise this from the perspective of technology? Will semi-solid-state or hybrid-solid-state lidar players be able to adopt the same technology route or take other strategies to reduce costs?
13.
Tesla now uses cameras in combination of millimetre wave radars and ultrasonic radars for perception. Is it possible that lidars will also be replaced by this combination in the ADAS segment? What is the impact of this combination on lidars?
