Hesai Technology (Nasdaq: HSAI), the global leader in lidar safety technology for automotive and robotics applications, announced that they have been selected by Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:) to be the exclusive long-range lidar supplier for its next-generation robotaxi platform Yichi 06. Baidu is an internet tech giant who is also one of the world's largest robotaxi service providers.
According to industry analysts, this lidar deal is worth an estimated $200-300 million based on Baidu's plans to deploy 100,000 robotaxi vehicles in China. It's expected to be the first widespread application of robotaxi in the Chinese market.
According to forecasts by Pacific Securities, the Chinese robotaxi market is expected to exceed $162.6 billion, in 2025 and $403.6 billion in 2030, making it one of the largest market opportunities across the autonomous driving landscape. As a result, lidar demand will continue to grow as more autonomous vehicle companies seek better sensor performance, safety and perception.
Baidu's Apollo Go 5th generation robotaxis, which are currently in operation in Wuhan and other cities in China, already use Hesai's Pandar series high-performance lidar as the main lidar. Just this year, the sixth-generation Apollo Go autonomous vehicles will also be deployed to the market. According to Baidu, the 6th generation vehicle's cost has dropped by 60% compared with the previous generation, to a pricepoint of only around $28,500.
According to Yole's "Lidar for Automotive 2024" report, Hesai dominated the global robotaxi lidar market in 2023, comprising an impressive 74% share of the current $124 million market. Among the top ten L4 autonomous driving companies globally, nine of them, including Zoox, NVIDIA and Nuro, use Hesai's high-performance lidar. Building off the company's success, Hesai's total lidar shipment volume has exceeded 380,000 units as of the first quarter of this year.
"The autonomous driving industry has rapidly evolved in recent years and today's surge of autonomous driving in China is a testament to the breakthroughs we've made in smart driving," said David Li, CEO & Co-Founder of Hesai. "Advanced sensors like lidar are accelerating the adoption of autonomous driving."
Hesai has already established a strong global business presence in the US, Europe and Asia with customers spanning over 40 countries, extending support and engineering resources across the globe to facilitate close collaboration with customers, and further enabling safe and reliable intelligent driving worldwide.
