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15 Apr 2025
Latest report from Yole indicates that telecoms giant Huawei has gained ground on leaders Hesai and Robosense.
China’s Hesai Technology and Robosense continue to lead the growing market for automotive lidar sensors, but another Chinese company - telecoms giant Huawei - is catching up.
That’s according to the latest “Lidar for Automotive” report from the French analyst group Yole Intelligence, the results of which Hesai is publicizing.
According to Yole, Hesai claimed a 33 per cent market share by sales revenue in 2024 - the fourth consecutive year it has topped the rankings. However, that market share figure is down from 38 per cent in 2023, and 46 per cent in 2022.
Overall the automotive lidar market is said to have grown 60 per cent year-on-year, reaching $859 million in 2024 from the sale of 1.6 million units.
Robosense is judged to have caught up slightly with Hesai, increasing its share from 22 per cent in 2023 to 24 per cent last year. But the strongest move appears to have been made by Huawei, whose share has jumped from 6 per cent to 19 per cent - meaning that it now ranks a clear third.
‘Mass adoption’ phase
In its own publicity for the new report, Yole highlighted Hesai’s dominant presence across both ADAS-enabled passenger cars and the robotaxi segment.
“This leadership position was bolstered by strategic partnerships with leading global OEMs, ongoing technological innovations, and rapidly growing demand in both the passenger car segment and robotaxi market,” reported Yole, pointing to Hesai’s design wins with no fewer than 22 auto makers across 120 different models - a list mostly comprising domestic Chinese customers, but also including Ford and Volkswagen.
Hesai remains particularly dominant in the robotaxi segment, claiming a 61 per cent share in 2024, down from 74 per cent a year earlier. The company recently signed an exclusive deal with Baidu to provide sensors for the tech giant’s Apollo Go robotaxi service, including 1000 new vehicles in Dubai.
“As the technology continues to grow in popularity, Chinese automakers are now implementing lidar beyond luxury vehicles, into more affordable, mass-market models, including C-segment cars priced around $25,000,” Yole said.
“This democratization drove the ADAS passenger car lidar market to grow by 68 per cent year-on-year in 2024. This marks a major turning point for the industry as it enters a true mass adoption phase.”
As examples it cites BYD’s “God’s Eye” intelligent driving system, which is now available in mass-market models, and Li Auto’s plans to standardize lidar across its entire 2025 lineup.
2025 ramp planned
For 2025, Yole is now expecting the adoption of lidar-based ADAS systems, given those recent commitments made by Chinese players, to push lidar deployments beyond 3 million units - and for Hesai to maintain its leadership position.
Hesai co-founder and CEO David Li noted: “Lidar is experiencing transformative growth as automakers increasingly rely on the technology to drastically increase safety and reliability across both manned and autonomous vehicles.
“Our advantage lies in the speed and scale at which we innovate and manufacture, driven by our initiative of delivering ultimate performance and ultimate value-to-cost.”
Last month Li said that, having shipped just over half a million lidar units in 2024, Hesai was aiming to increase its annualized production capacity to 2 million units by the end of this year, thanks to new production lines in China.
Yole analyst Pierrick Boulay commented: “Hesai’s continued market leadership reflects their sound business model and innovation capabilities across the sector. The company is uniquely positioned to capitalize on new opportunities as the industry continues to grow.”
Short-seller row
While most of its customers are based in China, Hesai is listed on the Nasdaq and even before the recent change in US administrations had been accused by the Department of Defense of an affiliation with the Chinese military - something Hesai has always vehemently denied.
The latest market figures also come a few weeks after Hesai publicly defended itself against new allegations by short-seller Blue Orca Capital, which said it had “smoking gun” photographic evidence of Hesai lidar units being used on Chinese combat vehicles, and predicted that the Shanghai-based firm would soon be de-listed from the US stock exchange.
Blue Orca also alleges that Hesai lost one of its largest single customers when US-based General Motors decided in December 2024 to end robotaxi development at its “Cruise” subsidiary.
Responding to those claims Hesai announced that it was “aware” of the Blue Orca report, that it “strongly disagreed” with the allegations it contained, and that the report was “without merit”.
“[Hesai] reiterates its continued and unwavering commitment to stringent standards of business ethics and regulatory compliance,” it added.
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