According to the exclusive information obtained by Tiger Sniff, Baidu, Ford and other global lidar giants Velodyne that have invested in it have just decided to withdraw from the Chinese market and lay off more than 20 people in China offices.
A source told Tiger Sniff that Velodyne China received a formal notification from the US headquarters on the weekend, and Velodyne CEO David Hall (David Hall) finally decided to cancel the entire direct sales team and some technical teams in China, only retaining Several people who are responsible for the after-sales of channels and major customers.
“On the one hand, it is the price competitiveness of the product itself in China, and on the other hand, the development of the Chinese autonomous driving market has almost stagnated.” An autopilot who knew the inside story sighed.
The test vehicle parked on the open space of Tencent’s Beijing headquarters last weekend, still using Velodyne’s old 64-line lidar
As we all know, as an important sensor technology, the core value of a lidar that emits laser light to sense and depict obstacles is “reliable and accurate ranging capabilities.”
As a result, it is regarded by critical rigorous self-driving technology experts as an essential key component for self-driving cars above L3.
As the earliest and most indisputable lidar supplier to enter the market, Velodyne monopolized the entire automotive lidar market by 2017.
Although its CEO, David Hall, is not the inventor of lidar, the “three-dimensional point cloud” system created on the basis of lidar can use a single and fixed line of sight to “discover” obstacles .
It is this invention of Hall that has made Velodyne’s products the standard for lidar technology in autonomous vehicles.
So, if it was two or three years ago, you could see a large spinning top printed with the Velodyne logo on the roof of an L4 self-driving car exhibited at any large autonomous driving conference.
According to a set of figures released by Velodyne in March 2019, since 2007, Velodyne’s lidar sales have exceeded 30,000 units, with sales reaching 500 million US dollars.
In addition, in August 2016, Velodyne also received a joint investment of up to $ 150 million from Ford and Baidu ($ 75 million each);
In 2018, in order to cooperate in the R & D and mass production of solid-state lidar that can enter the automotive supply chain system, Nikon also invested 25 million US dollars (about 177 million yuan) in Velodyne;
And this year, on October 24, 2019, the Lidar unicorn announced that it had received a $ 50 million investment from South Korean auto parts company Hyundai Mobis.
The biggest advantage of Lidar is that it uses 3D point clouds as automaticDriving a car to accurately “draw” the surrounding environment
However, the market has changed dramatically in the past 2 years.
On the one hand, a large number of lidar startups have entered the market with the boom of investment in autonomous driving tracks;
On the other hand, the goal of “substantially reducing lidar costs” proposed by all relevant companies as early as 2016 has not been achieved today;
The old and new lidars, which have been vocal 3 years ago, can be launched immediately. The solid-state / hybrid solid-state lidar, which has been difficult to produce, keeps the road of “embracing car manufacturers” at the R & D level. .
Yes, everyone is still relying on structurally unstable and “deadly expensive” mechanical rotary lidars to “live on.”
In other words, they can only sell to companies with self-driving test businesses.
This makes the old lidar company Velodyne embarrassed, because although they can produce the best quality and good performance mechanical rotary lidar, they ignore the “reverse product dismantling” of local Chinese companies. Solution ability “and” micro-innovation “ability .
In August this year, Velodyne filed two lawsuits with the California District Court, suing Chinese lidar startup Sagitar Jutron and Hesai Technology for plagiarizing their key technologies and seriously threatening the company’s business.
But the lawsuit seems to be gone by now.
In October this year, someone saw a Hesai product in the car of the Silicon Valley self-driving star company Zoox
The market is so cruel. Under the premise that product performance is getting closer, all companies willChoose the cheaper one.
A Velodyne insider told Tiger Sniff that Velodyne’s 16-line product line (the higher the number of lidar lines, the higher the scan definition and the higher the recognition accuracy. 16-line is also the majority of low-end and high-end autonomous vehicles The number of lines that will be configured, the demand is the largest, and the technology is the most mature.) It has been seriously threatened by Sagitar, the latter is almost half the price of the former.
Velodyne’s high-line 64-line product has encountered a fierce sniper from Hesai’s 40-line product. This means that customers who are making high-level autonomous vehicles (autonomous vehicles above the L3 level) are also snatched away.
Finally, the 128-line product, which symbolizes “the ultimate technology of mechanical lidar,” has a retail price of 700,000. Although this product line makes Velodyne very few rivals in the market, but the “curve height and widow”, very few people, and can not contribute to Velodyne sales.
Velodyne128 line products
As one of Velodyne’s largest investors, Baidu has also replaced all 64-line lidars in its cars with Hesai’s 40-line lidars this year.
At this year ’s Baidu Developer Conference, some Baidu engineers sniffed at Tiger, saying that under the situation that the laser radar’s same line number clarity effect is becoming consistent, domestic manufacturers are cheaper and their technical support is more timely.
In addition, the trip to Wenyuan, a self-driving unicorn company in China that aims to operate a fleet of L4 self-driving taxis, has also replaced Velodyne lidars on its cars with Hesai products.
“You do n’t see Baidu use Velodyne’s products anymore, you know what they are doing in China,” said an autopilot startup practitioner who believes that the lidar market leader “cannot mix” in the Chinese market. Is because