'Ice and Fire': Lidar is rising in the domestic MPV market, while foreign countries are in trouble

Another global first in the field of smart cars, born in China

△ The world’s first mass-produced MPV equipped with lidar, Hechuang V09

Lidar is on MPV and will be mass-produced and delivered soon. The

car comes from the new force Hechuang Automobile, and the lidar comes from the Tsinghua-based startup company Tanwei Technology.

The first year that lidar was put on the car was due to the contradiction between "the growing demand for intelligent driving and the lack of progress in pure visual systems as expected." So this year we saw lidar cars, sports cars, SUVs, commercial vehicles...

The lidar industry has also developed a pattern of two giants and top four startups in China.

The debut of Danhe’s new car still brings questions: Does MPV need lidar? What kind of lidar will be favored by OEMs?

The first lidar MPV, what kind of car is it?

This year, Jikrypton 009, BYD Denza D9, Lantu Dreamer, Trumpchi M8... independent MPV models were launched one after another. Alfa and GL8, which previously dominated the domestic MPV market, "overnight" There are countless more competitors.

And it is a strong competitor. For example, the accumulated orders of Denza D9 reached 70,000 within 4 months of its launch, almost completing the annual sales volume of a single model of joint venture imported MPV.

Hechuang V09 is another answer sheet submitted by independent brands in this year's MPV boom.

The wheelbase exceeds 3m. Hechuang officials said that V09 has achieved the most generous passenger cabin space in its class, with 1288mm of vertical space and 2834mm of front and rear space in the cabin.

The entire series is equipped with an 800V high-voltage system as standard, achieving a cruising range of 750km, with a peak fast charging power of up to 380kW, and the fastest charging time of 5 minutes to replenish energy for 200km.

Such basic parameters are the main selling points that independent MPVs are pursuing this year. It can also be said that ultra-large space, ultra-long battery life, and ultra-fast charging are the "required courses" for current independent new energy MPVs.

However, a large part of the explosive growth of domestic MPV users do not place orders for business attributes or "new energy" at all.

The newly launched independent MPVs, without exception, have broken through the "business reception", are suitable for business, and are even more inclined to the needs of family cars. It is aimed at the growing demand of Chinese users for space practicality, ride comfort and family travel.

Belongs to a new category that creates new demands and expands new markets. This type of MPV exploded in the domestic market and became a new scene for competition between respective main brands.

The MPV model has expanded its suitability for all-scenario travel. In the past, the attributes of utility vehicles driven by full-time drivers have been weakened, and it has returned to the essence of "travel space". In other words, for new MPVs, users are beginning to demand in-car connectivity, entertainment experience, riding experience and driving needs.

And all this points to intelligent driving. Only by liberating the driving burden on a deeper level can the value of travel space be more clearly reflected.

Therefore, intelligent driving has become a necessity for MPVs, and the demand for ADAS systems even exceeds that of other passenger cars.

But the prerequisite for smart driving to make people dare to use it is safety. Especially for MPV models, the body is longer and heavier, which puts forward higher requirements for the reliability and fault tolerance of ADAS.

This is why MPV must use lidar.

What does lidar bring to MPV?

Taking Hechuang V09 as an example, the entire vehicle’s intelligent driving infrastructure is Hechuang’s self-developed H-VIP3.0 intelligent driving interconnection system, which supports 24 different types of sensors and realizes almost all L2 intelligent assisted driving functions.

In today's stage of intelligent assisted driving - human-machine co-driving - all OEMs, including Hechuang, have requirements for intelligent driving systems that are easy to use and at the same time ensure System reliability and security.

At the current level of ADAS systems, most of them are based on visual perception, supplemented by millimeter-wave radar. But such a plan is still not a foolproof solution.

First of all, the shortcoming of the visual perception recognition algorithm is that there is a certain degree of false detection and missed detection, especially for unconventional special-shaped vehicles and objects on the road, and AI Scenarios that have not been learned before. No automatic driving database can guarantee to cover all corner cases.

The performance of millimeter-wave radar is still not good enough to make up for the shortcomings of pure visual systems. The effectiveness of millimeter-wave radar in identifying stationary objects has always been controversial. Musk even decided to cancel Tesla's only millimeter-wave radar.

Therefore, at a stage when pure visual algorithms have not yet made a breakthrough in the evolution from perception to cognition, lidar is the most effective and powerful blind-filling method for ADAS systems.

The principle of lidar is not difficult to understand: it emits detection light (generally 905nm or 1550nm wavelength), and when it encounters obstacles, it will definitely produce an echo, which naturally includes the shape, size and other characteristics of the object.

Adds a layer of redundancy to the risk of the camera "not seeing", at least at a perceptual level. ​

Specifically, the Hechuang MPV is equipped with the Duetto model lidar of Xunwei Technology, which is equivalent to 130 lines:

Duetto has angular resolution, visual angle The field angle parameters are the same as mainstream mass-produced forward lidar products, while the 300m detection range is much higher than the industry average.

Hechuang V09 chose to install Duetto in the center of the front bumper of the car roof to detect environmental obstacles in front of the vehicle while driving. The 120° field of view is consistent with the range that humans pay attention to when driving normally. , also coincides with the forward-looking camera range of the ADAS system.

So what lidar brings to Hechuang V09 is: as a sensing element independent of the visual system, it fuses its own point cloud map with the image data of the camera to make up for missed detections and wrong detections by the AI ​​vision algorithm, and provides ADAS with The decision-making system provides a more accurate basis.

In addition, the 300m detection range of the inspection lidar also gives the ADAS system more reaction time when dealing with emergencies.

Compensate for possible errors in the visual system and leave more windows of opportunity for all situations.

This is what lidar means to MPVs and all smart cars.

Under the premise that "pure vision is not everything", lidar, as a redundant fusion perception route, has become the choice of more players and is also a realistic path to achieve mass production of autonomous driving faster.

Since last year, the advancement of LiDAR’s fixed-point, SOP and mass production cooperation has reached a historic moment. The Xpeng P5 is here, the NIO ET7 is here, the Ideal L9 is here, the Hechuang V09 is here... The flagship models that have started to be delivered, have been released, and are about to be launched are all lidar models, and every car has at least one lidar.

However, what kind of lidar can be used in the car? Why did Hechuang choose Tanwei Technology?

What kind of lidar can be used on the car?

In the first year of lidar’s introduction, there are two most important trends worthy of attention.

The first is the "ice and fire" at home and abroad. Foreign suppliers that used to have a monopoly in the industry began to fall into crisis in the second half of last year. News of bankruptcy and mergers continued to spread. The core reason is that they missed the wave of semi-solid state vehicles and were unable to produce automotive-grade products. .

Domestic lidar startup companies have made rapid progress this year. Chinese players can be seen in almost all mass-produced vehicle lidar projects at home and abroad.

In this wave, there is a second trend: domestic lidar players have emerged from the "two giants and top four startups" pattern.

2 The giants refer to Huawei and DJI. They are big companies and big businesses, and their potential cannot be underestimated.

The top four entrepreneurship companies refer to He (Sai), Su (Teng), Tan (Wei), and Tu (Datong).

The technical routes vary, but without exception, they have all taken the lead in winning the appointment of car companies and achieving mass production and delivery.

The lidar landscape presents such a current situation. First of all, in the wave of intelligent assisted driving in passenger cars, some and only Chinese players have come up with stable mass-produced products in a timely manner, and the cost is much lower than that of foreign suppliers. business.

On the surface, it seems to be a game between cost and performance, but in fact, the essence is the accumulation of technology reserves.

Founder and CEO Wang Shiwei believes that Tanwei is "the lidar company with the fewest detours." It has been targeting solid-state automotive-grade lidar research and development from the beginning, and based on long-term exchanges and games with car companies, it has formed a A technology platform that finds the best balance between the three underlying requirements of "stability - cost - performance".

The ALS platform includes many different technical elements: integrated transceiver devices, independent TOF chips and algorithms, line spot, efficient assembly mass production (dimming process), etc. .

For example, in order to meet the requirements of car regulations, Tanwei Technology chose a more stable single-axis scanning mirror solution, while focusing on two aspects: reliability and appearance size.

At the cost level, Tanwei has used some of the technology from the spaceborne radar project that the team had developed when they were studying for a Ph.D. in the Department of Precision Instruments of Tsinghua University in its early years in automotive products, improving production efficiency while greatly reducing costs.

Cost-Performance has advantages, stable delivery is guaranteed, and open services can keep up, only then can lidar be put on the road. Tanwei did this, and so did other players who stood out.

The current landscape of the lidar industry also shows another side.

First of all, as a key sensor for smart cars, the competitive landscape of the industry has become increasingly obvious with the trend of both car companies and market segments being prosperous.

Some lidars are designated to cooperate with high-end models, which is conducive to early brand accumulation, while some lidars are designated to cooperate with mass market models, which is more conducive to popularization.

From the perspective of the development of the automobile industry, the real kings and players who run farther often come from the mass market. Therefore, judging from the current situation, the real competition for the mass market has not yet begun, but Tanwei’s recent news of fixed-point mass production has already shown its advantage in positioning.

And like smart cars, lidar also has the force and reaction force of data intelligence.

Lidar is not a simple hardware sensor, but a new smart sensor that integrates software and hardware. Data feedback and iteration will play an increasingly important role in the evolution of lidar technology. Tanwei's next-generation "fusion sensor" attempts to combine traditional cameras and lidar into one at the data fusion level.

The field of lidar is now flourishing with a hundred flowers blooming and a hundred schools of thought contending, but in the end it may show the same historical similarity as the automobile industry: a long-term separation will inevitably lead to a union.

The driving force behind this is that the mass market has gradually become the "Central Plains" where lidar companies compete.

The greater the number of cars on board, the more feedback there is and the faster iteration, just like the rotation of the "flywheel" in the field of autonomous driving. The leading player in such a race can also establish technical barriers that are difficult to surpass.

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