Thursday, April 06, 2017

Automotive LiDAR Market Trends

Semiconductor Engineering publishes an article on automotive LiDAR market and trends. Few quotes:

"Technavio forecasts the worldwide automotive LiDAR sensors market will see a compound annual growth rate of more than 34% up to 2020. The market research firm estimates the automotive LiDAR market was worth $61.61 million in 2015, with most of the spending in the Europe/Middle East/Africa region and in the Americas.

LiDAR manufacturers are working on reducing the cost of the system by employing efficient processing techniques, and in certain cases positioning products as per customer segments. “For instance, the price of the Velodyne LiDAR unit that is used on Google’s self-driving car is a 64-beam Velodyne HDL- 64E priced at $80,000,”
[Technavio analyst Siddharth] Jaiswal said. “Velodyne also offers 32-beam and 16-beam LiDAR units at $40,000 and $8,000 respectively, which can be used for economical projects. We expect LiDAR technology to follow a similar path of ‘radar’ in the automotive industry, where cost played a crucial role in market adoption. Hence cost is a key focus area for the players.”

LiDAR price trend to 2020, according to Technavio

Yole Developpement analyst Pierre "Cambou noted there are different approaches to autonomous driving, and LiDAR isn’t essential to all of them. “LiDAR is a fundamental piece of equipment for autonomous vehicles, which I would rather call robotic vehicles. There will be many levels of autonomy. LiDAR might be necessary for city autonomous emergency braking, probably in conjunction with radars and cameras. This multimodality approach is well-defined now. Nobody really questions it anymore.”

And LiDAR’s market will increase as prices drop, from about $300 million today to about $600 million over the next five years. “Today there are three entry points in automotive: $3,000, $300, and $30,” he said. “Cameras are currently at the $30 price point and LiDAR is at $3,000. The goal for the LiDAR players is to lower the cost and reach the $300 target without sacrificing too much of the performance. We will see such LiDARs entering the market, probably using solid-state approaches, in the next three years.


4 comments:

  1. Leftover from April 1st, or just an old Publication ?

    Velodyne, LeddarVu, Quanergy, etc. do research on "employing efficient processing techniques" and do "position products" as do many Companies.

    Lidar is entering the Solid-State Age. Rotating Lasers are years old, pucks and cubes that provide equal quality to mid-range mechanical systems are what's new.

    They can replace all but the very best mechanical Lidars and like all Lidars they measure precisely in the dark; something not offered by most Cameras or Radar (especially not for U$50 to a few hundred dollars).

    Your Post ends with a quote that we will see Solid-state in a few years, yet many Companies have been in production for that long.

    Even small Drones have Lidar nowadays.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ToF cameras see quite well in the dark, as good as any LiDAR.

      Delete
  2. @ Your Post ends with a quote that we will see Solid-state in a few years, yet many Companies have been in production for that long.

    Do you see any car in production that use a solid-state LiDAR?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'll have a look, do you require Sales of over 10M vehicles in order to count as a correct answer?

      http://www.volvocars.com/intl/about/our-innovation-brands/intellisafe/autonomous-driving

      Delete

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