The LiDAR, which will be used primarily on the sides of the body, has already received more than 1 million unit orders from car companies, according to Hesai.

(FT120. Image credit: Hesai Technology)

Chinese LiDAR supplier Hesai Technology has officially unveiled a new LiDAR product, saying it has already received orders for more than 1 million units, with deliveries set to begin in 2023.

The product, called FT120, is a LiDAR to fill the blind spot of near-range recognition and will be used mainly on the sides or around the body, according to a press release from Hesai on Wednesday.

The FT120 is a pure solid-state LiDAR, with laser emission and reception done entirely through chips, according to the company.

It has no internal moving parts and a significantly reduced total component count compared to traditional LiDARs, resulting in improved product reliability, production efficiency and mass production consistency, Hesai said.

The FT120 has a small footprint and can be seamlessly embedded on either side or around the body with a minimum exposed viewport size of 70 mm x 50 mm, according to the company.

With a 100° x 75° field of view and a maximum detection distance of 100 meters, the LiDAR is capable of sensing both street signs and railings at high locations and children, pets, cone buckets and crosswalks at low levels, Hesai said.

The product has a point frequency of 192,000 points/second and a global resolution of 160 (H) x 120 (V), allowing it to detect objects in rich detail, the company says.

Although semi-solid-state LiDAR has a longer detection range, the small vertical field of view may have a perception deficit for low objects close to the body if used to compensate for blindness on both sides, according to Hesai.

The FT120, a pure solid-state near-range LiDAR, has a larger vertical field of view and is more competitively priced, making it a better choice for ADAS (Advanced Driving Assistance System) to fill in blind spots, it said.

The FT120 has already been awarded contracts for a total of more than 1 million units by a number of car companies, with mass production deliveries expected to begin in the second half of 2023, the company said.

FT120 is not the first pure solid-state LiDAR product to be released, but it could be the first to achieve mass production at scale, the company said.

Hesai's core product is currently the AT128, which serves as the primary LiDAR, and which automotive brands including Li Auto, Jidu, HiPhi and Lotus have equipped in their models.

In September, LatePost reported that Xiaomi had identified Hesai as the LiDAR supplier for its first model, and would use one of the latter's hybrid solid-state radars, the AT128, as the primary radar, and several all-solid-state radars as fill-in radars.

On September 29, Hesai said the AT128 LiDAR exceeded 10,000 units delivered in a single month in September, making it the first LiDAR manufacturer in the world to reach that milestone.

Hesai's entire production line is 90 percent automated, and the entire line runs at a 60s beat, meaning that on average, a qualified LiDAR product rolls off the line every 60s, the company said at the time.

To meet future demand for larger deliveries, Hesai has also invested nearly $200 million in a manufacturing center known as Maxwell, which has a planned annual capacity of more than 1 million units, and the new facility is expected to be operational by 2023, it previously said.

(Hesai's Maxwell manufacturing center.)