PALO ALTO, Calif., January 8, 2024 – Hesai Technology (Nasdaq: HSAI) announced a series of high-profile product releases and business developments, seeking to advance intelligent driving systems to improve the efficiency and safety of global transportation and save lives. The announcements illustrate the company’s unmatched prowess in the areas of lidar innovation, advanced manufacturing and rapid commercialization.
The first announcement of the day is the launch of Hesai’s new flagship AT512 ultra long-range ADAS lidar. The AT512 is Hesai’s top-of-the-line, category killer product. It represents a leapfrog advancement in lidar innovation in a trim, compact form factor, targeting automotive OEMs who demand the very best in performance, reliability, and safety. The AT512 provides an industry-leading range of 300 meters at 10% reflectivity, with a maximum range exceeding 400 meters. It boasts an industry record 12.3 million points per second point-rate, surpassing ADAS competitors by multiples.
This achievement results in the highest resolution point cloud among any lidar manufacturer at 2400×512. The product’s sleek physical design measures just 160x100x45mm while offering a 120-degree horizontal field of view and a 25.6-degree vertical field of view. AT512 is also designed to greatly enhance ADAS systems by improving the vehicle’s perception capabilities. It provides world-class 3D environmental scans at ultra-high resolution, greatly improving a vehicle’s ability to detect objects at long range. This game-changing lidar means AT512 equipped ADAS systems will have 40% more reaction time to avoid dangerous road conditions. It will significantly improve transportation safety.
“The AT512 represents a tremendous breakthrough in lidar technology. It provides unprecedented performance improvements in all of the key areas our customers care about, such as range, resolution, thermal, power consumption, and form factor,” said David Li, Co-founder and CEO of Hesai. “Our core belief is that intelligent manufacturing needs to be part of our R&D efforts. Moreover, this belief has guided us to move beyond traditional 1550 nanometer laser-based lidar. We have adopted more advanced 905 nanometer technology, as evidenced by the superior performance, quality, and reliability of our AT512.”
The second announcement of the day is the public reveal of the new ultra-thin ET25 ADAS lidar. Design it for installation behind a vehicle’s windshield to facilitate easier integration. This also helps maintain the vehicle aerodynamics and keeps the lidar clear of dirt and debris. The ET25 provides powerful performance combined with a revolutionary design that makes vehicle integration easier than ever. ET25 also provides 250 meters of range at 10% reflectivity and received a 2024 CES Innovation Award for best new product.
“The ET25 is a revolutionary product that provides an ultra-thin design without sacrificing performance,” said Li. “We’re already working with leading OEMs to integrate the ET25 into series production vehicles. Moreover, we plan to start production in Q1 of 2025.”
Continuing the wave of new business developments is the news Hesai has completed construction on a new 740,000 square foot state-of-the-art R&D center for manufacturing, named “Maxwell” after Scottish physicist James Maxwell’s famous equations which form the foundation of electromagnetism, optics, electric and magnetic circuits. The new cutting-edge facility includes the world’s most advanced lidar testing lab. Moreover, it will utilize many smart industrial robots, allowing for the automation of over 100 production processes with an automation rate of 90%. The cycle time per lidar unit is 45 seconds. The new facility uses a proprietary smart cloud manufacturing execution system (MES) capable of precisely tracking the entire production chain. It also allows for any problem to be traced back to the source, precisely located, and promptly controlled.
“Our new Maxwell facility is not a traditional manufacturing facility. Instead, it is an advanced R&D center where we design and build automated lidar production lines. These lines can then be easily replicated across our global network of manufacturing facilities,” said Li. “With Hesai’s commercial engine now in full swing, we expect to drive lidar adoption forward for everyone.”
Today’s news comes on the heels of Hesai winning a lidar design contract. This contract is with a leading global OEM for an upcoming fully electric series production program. The company also recently surpassed 300,000 accumulative units delivered including a new high of 50,000 units in the month of December alone. Fifteen leading OEMs and tier-1 suppliers have selected Hesai automotive lidar, encompassing over 50 series production models and continuing to grow.
Hesai will be exhibiting at CES 2024 in Las Vegas and visitors are encouraged to visit their exhibit in the LVCC West Hall booth #5967.
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