On April 14th, HESAI officially launched its latest vehicle-grade ultra-thin long-range LiDAR ET25 for the ADAS OEM market. It is a highly named LiDAR product with “ET” standing for Extremely Thin, featuring a body height of only 25 mm, making it extremely lightweight.
Moreover, as an indoor LiDAR designed to be placed behind the windshield, the ET25 provides more possibilities for automotive manufacturers to install LiDARs on their vehicles.
LiDAR can provide high-precision 3D perception for intelligent vehicles, which complements and serves as redundancy with cameras to provide higher safety. It is a key perception hardware that supports the landing of L2+ and L2++ ADAS applications. The installation method of ET25 on the rear side of the windshield “unlocks” a smoother overall vehicle design, which does not affect the vehicle’s aerodynamic resistance and makes the acceleration experience smoother.
At the same time, the cabin design allows ET25 to be cleaned promptly when encountering dirt, rain, and fog without the need for additional cleaning solutions. With only the vehicle’s wiper, the radar’s field of view can be cleaned in a timely manner, ensuring that LiDAR can maintain reliable performance in more scenarios.
ET25 can achieve integrated and unique design inside the cabin, highlighting the following features:
ET25 is only 25 mm thick, almost half as thin as AT128, but with stronger performance. ET25 has a FOV of 120° (H) x 25° (V), with a range of up to 250 meters when there is no windshield glass obstruction, or up to 225 meters with windshield glass obstruction (note: using special windshield glass with transmittance above 85%, taking the numerical value of the middle area of the radar field of view), with a point frequency exceeding 3 million per second, and a minimum resolution of only 0.05° x 0.05°, providing ultra-high definition long-range 3D perception for intelligent vehicles.
HESAI uses a new generation of self-developed transceiver chips and more advanced laser transceiver modules to significantly improve the sensitivity of the ET25 receiving chip by several times. As a result, the range of 905nm LiDAR can be extended to more than 250m for objects with only 10% reflection rate. This helps intelligent vehicles to timely identify risks and make safer decisions when encountering complex road conditions.
All sensors integrated above the cockpit need to leave a certain space between the windshield, called the Keep Out Zone (KOZ). The thicker the sensor, the larger the required KOZ, for example, the ET25 with a thickness of 25 mm has a KOZ that is more than half smaller than that of other long-range lidars with a thickness of 45 mm. Because the sensor bracket is located above the driver, a smaller KOZ can take up less cockpit space, effectively reducing the impact on the driver’s visibility.
The ET25 has a power of only 12 W but has excellent heat dissipation performance, allowing it to operate continuously in the cabin for a long time even on hot summer days while maintaining high performance. In addition, choosing sensors with lower energy consumption can help smart cars save on battery and range costs.
The noise of ET25 during operation in the cabin is less than 25 decibels, which is lower than the noise level in a quiet library, fully meeting the NVH requirements of luxury electric vehicle brands in the cockpit, and providing users with an “immersive” quiet driving experience.
In order to integrate the LiDAR sensor into the cabin, a special windshield is also necessary as a “secret weapon”. On the day of the release of ET25, HESAI officially announced a strategic cooperation with Fuyao Group to jointly promote the landing application of the ET25 front-loading mass production plan. Fuyao’s special front windshield achieves optimized infrared light transmission in the characteristic band of the LiDAR, solving the industry problem of signal attenuation caused by ordinary glass during the operation of the LiDAR in the cabin. This specially processed near-infrared glass is used in the KOZ area of the LiDAR to meet the performance requirements.
In addition, Fuyao also has industry-leading multi-functional front windshield integrated assembly design capabilities, rich design and mass production supply experience in the automotive glass industry, and can meet the customized requirements of different vehicle models. It not only meets the on-board requirements of HESAI ET25, but also realizes the perfect integration of the cabin radar and existing ADAS systems.
In the future, HESAI and Fuyao will combine their respective industry resources and technological advantages to jointly promote the mass production of on-board LiDAR installation solutions, bringing innovative products and solutions with high added value to global users in the field of intelligent vehicles.
Continuously leading the global automotive LiDAR market
ET25 combines a lightweight and slim appearance with ultra-high performance, which is another innovative breakthrough brought by HESAI to the industry after the pure solid-state LiDAR FT120, and is also another heavyweight product launched by HESAI for the ADAS front-loading mass production market.
HESAI’s flagship ADAS LiDAR product AT128 has already obtained millions of LiDAR mass production orders from 11 automakers and technology companies, including LI AUTO, JIDU, HIPHI, Lotus, CHANGAN AUTO, and SAIC. Deliveries started from July last year and have been loaded onto various models such as LI L9, L8 Max, L7 Max, Hiphi Z, and Lotus Eletre.
