20 18, IPO of Nio. The United States raised10 billion dollars.
In 2020, the ideal (Li. The United States) raised $65,438+0,654.38+0 billion in IPO, and Tucki (XPEV. United States) IPO financing1.500 million US dollars.
On February 24, Ludwig and Churchill reached an agreement, the capital four (CCIV. The United States), and Lucid will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange by merging with the latter.
This transaction will bring about 4.4 billion to Lucid!
It is worth noting that this is by far the largest IPO of electric vehicles in the world.
Although Lucid has not delivered production cars to consumers, the company's product strategy is the closest to Tesla, and it also has a deep foundation in the team.
Lucid's "Soul Person" CEO&; CTO Peter Rawlinson was the chief engineer of Tesla Model S. In addition, eight members of Lucid's 19 senior management team had worked in Tesla.
Lucid VS Tesla: the quality of three electrical systems
In 20 16, Lucid released a new car, Lucid Air.
20 19, 165438+ 10. In October, Lucid built a factory in Arizona, USA, and the plan worth 700 million US dollars (about 4.9 billion yuan) was finally approved by the local government.
Three years after its release, in September 2020, Lucid officially announced that the starting price of Lucid Air was $77,400, positioning it as the world's first electric vehicle with a mileage of 500 miles (about 804 kilometers).
If American users can enjoy the federal tax relief of $7,500, the actual price of this car is less than 1 10,000.
From the perspective of product positioning and price, Lucid Air's most direct competitor is Tesla Model S.
Sober air has a breakthrough motion index.
Under the weight of 74kg, Lucid's drive unit (motor and its related components) can provide up to 670 horsepower, which can be nearly three times that of competing products.
According to the measured data of electric vehicle researchers at Carnegie Mellon University:
The energy consumption of Lucid Air is about 136Wh/km, while the Model S is 156Wh/km under the same conditions.
Lucid Air is more energy efficient than Model S, of which 2% comes from aerodynamic optimization and 15% comes from motor design optimization.
However, considering that Lucid is, the efficiency is naturally higher than Tesla's AC induction.
But at least they are almost at the same level, and the dynamic range of AC induction is larger, but the efficiency is slightly lower.
202165438+1October 28th, the brand-new Model S was launched in Tesla official website, China, with three models in total:
The price ranges from 799, 990 yuan to 65,438+065,438+074, and 900 yuan, which are two-motor four-wheel drive long-life version, three-motor grid version and grid Plus version respectively, in which the grid version accelerates only 2. 1 second, while the Lucid version is 2.5 seconds.
The motor is very small, and the difficulty lies in heat dissipation. The most traditional heat dissipation method is ""-the general method is to use the heat dissipation grid on the surface of the motor to increase the heat dissipation area, and some will add a heat dissipation fan to increase the heat dissipation effect, which has the advantage of low cost.
In addition, the cooling channels are mainly arranged on the motor housing, allowing water to flow and taking away heat.
This kind of heat dissipation is more luxurious.
Because of the extra electric water pump and radiator, this invisibly increases the extra cost and power consumption, and the structure is more complicated and the manufacturing difficulty is also improved.
But for Lucid, neither of the above methods is what they want.
They developed "",through which water can flow through the hot wire, thus achieving the effect of cooling.
I have to turn over the history of Lucid here.
Its predecessor was Atieva, which was established in 2007 and mainly engaged in the research and development of the three major electric systems of electric vehicles. Headquartered in Newark, California, USA, its main customers are vehicle manufacturers. It was not until 20 14 that it was transformed into an electric vehicle and renamed as Lucid.
Simply put, Lucid was an auto parts supplier in the early days.
Because Lucid is the exclusive supplier of Formula E racing battery technology.
Lucid designed and manufactured all battery packs for Formula E racing cars and provided a battery management system for Formula E racing cars.
Lucid is quite proud of his battery technology.
Lucid Air's 924V battery system is the battery pack with the highest voltage among all mass-produced electric vehicles. Coupled with the large battery pack of 1 13KWh, the Lucid Air Grand Touring version can achieve 832 kilometers of EPA battery life.
Lucid Air is manufactured by LG Chemical Company.
Different from Tesla's method of inserting heat pipes between batteries to realize battery temperature management, Lucid's temperature control is to add heat pipes to the upper and lower batteries.
The advantage of this is that more batteries can be loaded into the same battery pack, which is why the maximum battery capacity of Lucid can reach 1 13 KWh.
As a result, the cruising range of the Grand Touring version of EPA can reach 832 kilometers, which can be easily exceeded when converted into the domestic NEDC standard.
Lucid uses a 900 V high-voltage battery, which needs less current than a 400 V battery under the same output power.
Then this means that thinner cables and wires can be used, and the volume of the three electric systems can be further reduced.
If reflected by data, the cruising range of Lucid Air is 7.4 km/kWh, which is obviously superior to Tesla's Model S in efficiency, which is about 6.6 km.
It also supports charging power of more than 300KW, Porsche Taycan of more than 270KW, Tesla Model 3 and Model Y of 250KW.
Lucid wants to compete head-on with Tesla. In addition to the competition at the level of the three power systems, autonomous driving is also the focus of the goal.
Lucid Air challenges Tesla's secret weapon: MEMS lidar
Tesla is currently testing its fully automatic driving system FSD and will soon push the official version to consumers.
Lucid will definitely catch up in this field. The first model Lucid Air is directly equipped with DreamDrive, which is only 2 1 compared with Tesla Autopilot 2.0.
Lucid Air will also be equipped with lidar. According to the plan of mass production and delivery of this model in the second half of this year, it may be the first mass production car equipped with lidar in the world.
Lucid Air's 32 sensors include:
1 forward lidar
1 Forward-looking three-eye camera
4 short-range millimeter-wave radars
4 front, rear, left and right cameras
1 independent rearview camera
12 ultrasound
4 fisheye 360 camera
12 ultrasound
1 DMS camera
This scheme does not use long-range millimeter wave radar.
According to the official disclosure of Lucid, the laser radar it uses is equivalent to the line 125. Combined with the estimation of the opening size in the official photos of Lucid Air, the forward laser radar is provided by domestic sagitar Juchuang (at present, only the product of sagitar Juchuang is the line M 1 compliance 125, which is small in size and can be embedded in the narrow slot below the logo of Lucid Air).
Lucid's lidar can be placed under the logo or in the rearview mirror, but considering that the windshield is not a complete flat glass, it may affect performance, so it is more likely to be placed under the logo.
Why did Lucid choose sagitar?
In fact, there is a long-term consideration of Lucid, hard Tesla, and the automatic driving system needs to meet the assembly needs of all models.
Therefore, Lucid chooses lidar. Besides high performance and small size, the space for exploring the cost of the scheme must be large enough.
Therefore, considering the performance, volume, cost performance and maturity, Lucid chose the MEMS lidar technology route.
But as we all know, MEMS has the most obvious advantage in cost control, but its performance is difficult to improve.
The difficulty of MEMS lies in the narrow signal-to-noise ratio, effective distance and FOV.
Firstly, the aperture of MEMS lidar receiver is very small, which is much lower than that of mechanical lidar, and the signal light emission &: The received peak power is directly proportional to the aperture area of the receiver, which means that the signal-to-noise ratio is reduced.
Then, because the MEMS scheme usually only uses one set of transmitting and receiving devices, the signal optical power must be much lower than that of mechanical lidar, which leads to further power reduction, which means lower signal-to-noise ratio and shorter effective distance.
The resolution of the scanning system is determined by the product of the mirror size and the maximum deflection angle, which are contradictory. The larger the mirror size, the smaller the deflection angle.
Finally, the cost and size of MEMS vibrating mirror are also proportional. At present, the largest size in the public information is Mirrorcle, which can reach 7.5 mm and the price is as high as.
The MEMS micro-vibration mirror developed by Seaview Technology invested by Sagitar has a diameter of 5 mm and has entered the mass production stage.
How to solve the problem of doubling the laser transceiver module and ensuring the performance at the same time?
Sagitar juchuang invention
The idea is very simple. Combine several lidar into 1. At present, sagitar Juchuang is 5.
Because there are five lidar horizontal joint scanning, the FOV requirement of each lidar is very low, and the FOV is only 25 degrees.
In this way, the size of MEMS vibrating mirror can be larger and the performance can be higher. The horizontal joint scanning of five laser radars is equivalent to a five-fold improvement in performance.
Sagitar Juchuang applied for a patent for this.
Only three lasers are shown in the patent specification. The laser (1 10) emits laser light, which reaches the surface of the galvanometer (120) and is reflected. The reflected laser is (2 10). At another moment, the galvanometer rotates, and the reflected laser is (220).
Three lasers are combined into a fan.
In order to ensure that there are no blind spots, the edges of the coverage areas of the three lasers will overlap a little.
There is an included angle (42 1) between the vibrating mirror and the horizontal plane, which cannot be 90 degrees, which will affect the acceptance of reflected laser and cause interference.
In practical application, it is necessary to add a collimator lens, as shown in the above figure (5 10) is a laser and (530) is a collimator lens. Collimator lens refers to a lens that can turn the light emitted from each point in the diaphragm into a parallel collimated beam, that is, an aspheric mirror, which is composed of multiple lenses.
This horizontal joint scanning lidar not only broadens the FOV of the radar, reduces the area requirement of the galvanometer, and improves the signal-to-noise ratio and resolution, but also can flexibly adjust the ROI performance of the lidar.
As a kind of sensor, lidar is the core index of sensor, but it is also an index that lidar enterprises never disclose.
Laser diode suppliers are also well aware of this. At present, the new laser diode also adopts multi-channel laser diode design.
In terms of emission, sagitar Juchuang still chooses mature eel laser, but in terms of reception, it chooses a new type, which improves the sensitivity of APD by 10 cubic order of magnitude, that is, the quantum efficiency is improved by 3 orders of magnitude, and the signal-to-noise ratio of the system is improved.
At the same time, its single-point SIPM skillfully bypasses the worldwide problems of SIPM array and SPAD:
Even the problems brought by cross talk.
SiPM, also known as MPPC, is a silicon photomultiplier tube.
Each silicon photomultiplier tube consists of a large number (hundreds to thousands) of single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) cells, each cell is composed of a SPAD and a large resistance quenching resistor in series, and these elements are connected in parallel to form a planar array.
After the silicon photomultiplier tube is applied with reverse bias (usually tens of volts), the SPAD depletion layer of each cell has a high electric field.
At this time, if photons come in from the outside, they will compton scatter with electron-hole pairs in the semiconductor, producing electrons or holes, and high-energy electrons and holes will accelerate in the electric field, producing a large number of secondary electrons and holes, which is an avalanche.
At this time, the current in each micro-element circuit suddenly increases, the voltage falling on the quenching resistor R also increases, and the electric field in SPAD instantly decreases, that is, after SPAD outputs an instantaneous current pulse, the avalanche stops, and the quenching resistors of different micro-elements have the same resistance, so in theory, each micro-element will output equal pulses.
Working in Geiger mode, the gain can reach 654.38+ ten thousand times, and the gain of ordinary APD is less than 654.38+000 times. In addition, each unit is a logic unit with a signal output of "654.38+0" and no signal of "0".
In the dynamic range of silicon photomultiplier tube, its output current is proportional to the number of avalanche components, so it is an analog device as a whole.
SiPM is very similar to SPAD, and SPAD area array can be very high. The laboratories of Panasonic, Sony and Canon all exceed 6.5438+0 million pixels, but the maturity of SPAD is not high.
At present, it is difficult to solve the problem of solar interference, and the effect at night is far better than during the day. Sony's back photo design can be improved a lot, but it will take time for commercialization.
Regardless of technical maturity, the cost of SPAD is relatively high.
In the case that back-illuminated SPAD is not commercialized, the highest performance reception at present can only be SiPM.
For lidar manufacturers, it is impossible to independently develop SPAD. Japanese companies have an overwhelming advantage in this respect. American companies are good at laboratory development, but commercialization is difficult, while Japanese companies are good at commercialization.
The horizontal FOV of sagitar Juchuang is 120 degrees, that is, five sectors, each of which is 25 degrees, with 1 degree overlap in the middle.
The longest detection distance is 200 meters, even under reflectivity. Under the reflectivity of 10%, the effective distance of traditional MEMS lidar will be less than 50 meters or even 30 meters.
The lidar used for Lucid has a thickness of 45 mm, a depth of 108 mm and a width of 1 10 mm, which is quite compact.
Sagitar Juchuang also found a solution to the reliability problem of MEMS solutions.
Two months ago, sagitar released a number of reliability test videos, including DV (Design Verification) test items such as mechanical shock, random vibration, high and low temperature operation and high pressure water shock.
According to official information, sagitar Juchuang M 1 was delivered in June 5438+February 2020. At the same time, an automatic production line with an annual output of six figures has been established, which is expected to be put into production in the second quarter of this year.
This may be the fastest mass production delivery of high-performance automotive lidar in the world.
In the field of automatic driving, the task of sensing part is to obtain accurate and reliable three-dimensional environmental information. It is impossible to accomplish this task by adding monocular and tricular in deep learning.
The fatal defect of monocular and tricular cameras is that target recognition (classification) and detection are integrated and inseparable, and only after recognition can the target information be detected.
And deep learning will definitely miss the detection, which means that the 3D model is missing.
Because the cognitive range of deep learning comes from its data set, and the data set is limited, it is impossible to exhaust all types, so deep learning is easy to miss detection and ignore obstacles ahead.
If the target can't be identified, the monocular can't get the distance information, and at the same time, the system will think that the obstacle in front is not dangerous and will not slow down. This is the reason for most accidents in Tesla.
As long as you use lidar, you have an overwhelming advantage. It can be said that Lucid with lidar is better than Tesla FSD without lidar.
With the maturity of lidar technology and the reduction of cost, systems above L2 will use lidar, and Tesla may also adopt it.
From the design of the three-electric system that challenges the physical characteristics of the vehicle to the lidar that greatly improves the performance of the autopilot software, these two designs have become Lucid's secret weapons against Tesla.
With the evolution of the three-electric system design of major car companies and the higher standard automatic driving system layout equipped with laser radar, the era of intelligent electric driving, which gives human beings the highest expectation for travel safety and environmental protection, is accelerating.
Reprinted from "Zhitong Finance Network"
# Electric car # # Tesla # #IPO#
# Battery technology # # Long battery life #