Chinese automotive LiDARs at a glance

Due to a fierce government policy promoting the transition towards electrical vehicles for over 20 years, Chinese OEMs are already at the democratisation stage of LiDAR integration in cars. This contributes majorly to the impressive 69% CAGR 2022-2028 of LiDAR market revenue foreseen by Yole Intelligence in its LiDAR FOR Automotive report.

Seyond: formerly Innovusion

In terms of market share, Seyond (formerly Innovusion - Latest news) has been propelled directly from the 'Others' category to the leading position thanks to a fruitful partnership with Nio. In this fast-moving market, Seyond could leave the centre stage shortly to Hesai and Robosense (Latest news) who have opted for a multi-partnership strategy.

Highlights from Yole systemplus teardown tracks

The Robosense RS-LiDAR-M1 is a 905 nm MEMS scanner. It combines five optical modules, each housing a laser and a SiPM (Silicon Photomultiplier) which detects objects within a 200 m range. The key technical feat lies in the precise alignment of these five modules, reducing object detection offset to a minimum.

Seyond's Falcon LiDAR is a motorised optomechanical scanner using a prism and a set of optical fibres. A non-standard 1550 nm wavelength is achieved by coupling a 1550 nm seed fibre laser with a 940 nm pumping fibre laser and approximately 6 meters of erbium-doped fibre.

However, this setup consumes 28 watts, 1.9 times more than Robosense's system. Additional developments will undoubtedly be required to mitigate this drawback.

A first cost estimation puts the Seyond LiDAR BOM (Bill of Materials) at 1.7 times that of Robosense, result mainly attributed to the integration of more expensive and difficult to source components.