The automotive LiDAR market will usher in a $10 billion blue ocean market in three years

The global LiDAR industry has entered its first year of an era in 2021 and will enter a long explosive cycle with the growth of the volume of L3 and above vehicles.

LiDAR is the key hardware of high-level intelligent driving perception. In terms of reliability, pedestrian discrimination, night mode, severe weather environment, detail resolution, detection distance, etc., LiDAR has the best comprehensive performance among the three environmental sensors. Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, NIO and Xiaopeng have successively released a number of models with L3 level autonomous driving capability since 2021. BYD signed a strategic cooperation agreement with RoboSense, and BAIC ARCFOX and Huawei also jointly launched new models of L2-L4 class.With the upgrading of the demand for intelligent autonomous vehicles, the advantages of LiDAR products are becoming more and more obvious, and its market is about to usher in a broad space for development.

ICV, the world-renowned cutting-edge technology consulting agency, released a report named "Global automotive LiDAR market forecast-2022", which made an accurate analysis and prediction of the global automotive LiDAR industry.

1.The global automotive LiDAR market has officially started its massive journey since 2021

In 2021, the global installed volume of automotive LiDAR has reached 180,000, all of which are installed in L3-level intelligent driving vehicles, and large-scale mass production and applications have not yet been realized at the L4-L5 level. 180,000 may be a small-scale mass production, but it is the beginning of industrial significance.

ICV predicts that global automotive LiDAR shipments will reach 6.936 million units by 2026, of which L3 and L4-L5 levels will increase to 5.385 million and 1.551 million, respectively. The growth rate of 21-26 will be staggering, with five-year CAGR of 97.4% and 62.9%, respectively.

2.Solid-state is the future trend of LiDAR, but it will still be dominated by mechanical and semi-solid within five years

The development of automotive LiDAR mainly lies in the following three dimensions: performance, reliability and cost. Among them, the performance includes long-distance ranging, high point frequency, high precision and other detection capabilities, and reliability requires LiDAR to perform well in consistency, stability and pass vehicle specification certification, both of which jointly determine the value of LiDAR.Cost includes BOM(Bill of Materials) cost, production cost, etc., which is a key factor restricting the large-scale mass production and application of automotive LiDAR. Reducing costs through technological innovation is a necessary way for automotive LiDAR to be promoted on a large scale.

ICV believes that solid-state types will become the technical direction of the long-term development of LiDAR due to their higher accuracy, smaller size and lower cost, compared with the earliest, most mature but expensive mechanical type.

In 2021, the number of mechanical LiDAR units reached 169,000, accounting for 94% of the global automotive LiDAR market. That's down from 95% in 2020, and this slight decline also confirms the trend of (semi)solid-state technology. ICV predicts that by 2026, the number of mechanical and (semi)solid-state LiDAR will increase to 5.7 and 1.2 million, respectively, and the CAGR in 21-26 will be as high as 102.0% and 158.7%.

Mechanical LiDAR is not only bulky, but also expensive. The mechanical automotive LiDAR market size in 2021 is $1.2 billion, accounting for 98.3% of the overall market.

ICV analysts believe that under the multiple roles of upstream suppliers improving crafts and controlling costs, large Internet enterprises cooperating with OEM to overcome technology, and downstream policy environment driving demand, the automotive LiDAR will usher in a $10 billion blue ocean market in three years, with a growth space of $62.39 billion in the next five years.

ICV predicts that by 2026, the automotive LiDAR market size will reach $21.20 billion, with mechanical and solid-state LiDAR accounting for 93.4% and 6.6% respectively, which means that mechanical will remain dominant in the next five years. The variable comes from whether the research and development process of solid-state LiDAR will accelerate.

3.Chinese manufacturers have a chance to emerge as a new force

ICV estimates the share of LiDAR development manufacturers in the automotive LiDAR market in 2021, including more than a dozen leading companies worldwide. Among them, Valeo accounts for 28% of the global market, ranking first in the world; RoboSense, a Chinese company, accounts for 10% of the global market, ranking second in the world.

The global LiDAR market presents a competitive pattern of a hundred flowers blooming.Due to their early start and obvious advantages, European and American enterprises still occupy the current global automotive LiDAR market, mainly mechanical, more than 70%.Chinese enterprises led by RoboSense and Huawei are on the rise. With their narrowing performance gap with western, cost advantage, and pioneering breakthroughs in the field of solid-state LiDAR in the future, it is very likely to accelerate the growth of the share of Chinese suppliers in the global market.