On May 10th, the domestic laser radar start-up Hesai Technology announced today that it has completed the A round of 110 million yuan financing. The financing was led by Pagoda Investment, which will be invested by Men Ventures, Shibuya Ventures and Yuanzhan Capital.
Hesai Technology was established in San Jose, USA in 2013. Its main business is laser radar for automatic driving, laser natural gas telemetry system, etc., and settled in Shanghai in 2014.
In April 2017, Hesai released the Pandar40, a 40-line hybrid solid-state laser radar for autonomous driving. According to reports, the effective detection range of the Pandar40 is 150 meters, and the harness distribution is optimized for automatic driving with an angular resolution of 0.33°. Hesai said that Pandar's performance is equivalent to a 83-line conventional laser radar.
Li Yifan, co-founder/CEO of Hesai Technology, said that this round of financing mainly has two purposes. One is to speed up the construction of the Pandar Lidar scale production line, to meet the demand of existing orders as soon as possible, and the second is to promote the new generation of laser radar - Pandar Progress in the development of GT.
According to Li Yifan, the Pandar GT is a new type of laser radar tailored for the next generation of autonomous driving and advanced assisted driving vehicles. Its core working principle is different from Pandar hybrid solid-state radar and most quasi-solid-state/solid-state laser radars on the market. Significantly optimize reliability, size and cost while increasing the range of ranging. The goal of Hesai is to provide a complete lidar solution costing hundreds of dollars for advanced driver-assisted vehicles that are mass-produced around 2020-2022.
It is understood that the Lidar automatic driving industry recognizes important sensors. At present, the major autopilot companies and automakers use Velodyne's 64-line laser radar products when developing autopilot technology. However, due to the small output, Velodyne's above-mentioned products are slow to supply, and even the case of picking up goods needs to wait for half a year. .
Li Yifan told Zhixiang that the products of Hesai Technology took into account the mass production problem at the beginning of R&D. With the increase of market demand and the gradual climb of production capacity, Hesai Technology can provide sufficient supply to the market. He also revealed that Pandar40's sales are currently good, and its orders overseas are more than domestic.
In addition, Hesai Technology also revealed that it had jointly tested with a large number of early technologies when it released Pandar40, including Weilai Auto, Baidu, Zhixing, and the company.
