On February 18, Geometry Partners, a supplier of autonomous driving solutions, announced the completion of a new round of strategic financing, which was exclusively invested by Yuan Bo Capital, a subsidiary of Bosch.
Previously, many well-known institutions such as ARM Eco-industry Fund, Silijie, Yaotu Capital, Xinyu Yihe, Jingwei China, Xiaomi Investment, Baidu Venture Capital, Puhua Capital, etc. all appeared in the fundraising of Geometry Partner Angel Round and Pre-A Round.
The company's main business is 4D millimeter wave imaging radar, which is a major upgrade direction of intelligent driving hardware. Zhu outspoken, partner and CEO of Yuan Bo Capital Management, said that millimeter wave radar is one of the core sensors of smart cars. Looking at the product iteration and technical route of millimeter-wave radar manufacturers around the world, its upgrading and evolution direction is 4D imaging radar.
It is worth mentioning that at this year's CES, the CEO of Intel Mobileye bluntly said that 4D imaging millimeter-wave radar is one of the important driving factors of consumer-grade self-driving cars, and lidar is no longer the key.
Multi-layout 4D imaging radar enters mass production year.
Generally speaking, due to the limitation of cost, the traditional millimeter-wave radar can't measure the height, and the angular resolution is low, so it can't filter static objects. Therefore, it is difficult to perform autonomous driving tasks independently, and it has been marginalized in ADAS system for a long time.
In contrast, 4D imaging radar extends the function measurement from distance, velocity and horizontal azimuth to distance, azimuth, pitch angle and relative velocity, which solves the performance shortcomings of traditional millimeter wave radar.
When it is combined with a multi-camera camera, it does not need any lidar in theory-this may be one of the reasons why Tesla Musk insists that "lidar is useless". CICC Securities reported on June 5438+08 that this technology is expected to raise the status of millimeter-wave radar in ADAS system from the edge to the core.
Continental has previously taken the lead in releasing ARS 540, the world's first mass-produced 4D imaging radar product, and auto giants such as Bosch, Ampufu and ZF have successively completed the layout; In China, Huawei launched a high-resolution 4D imaging radar last year, and SAIC R ES33 announced that it will be equipped with ZF 4D imaging radar.
At present, this track has officially entered a large-scale fixed-point cycle, and will enter a small-scale pre-assembly stage from next year. High-tech Intelligent Automobile Research Institute predicts that the carrying capacity of 4D imaging radar will exceed one million by then; In 2025, the new car carrying rate of L2+ and above in the domestic market is expected to exceed 50%.
With the rapid increase of carrying capacity, the market scale will also expand. According to the above report of CICC, under optimistic circumstances, the market size of China will reach 540 million US dollars in 2025, with a compound growth rate of 88% from 2022 to 2025.
At the same time, 4D imaging radar can also be used in smart homes, smart cities, smart factories and other fields to expand business scope and increase profit margins.