On October 8, the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily reported that Ibeo, the originator of global automotive laser radar, had recently declared bankruptcy and was negotiating with potential investors.
At present, the Hamburg court in Germany has approved Ibeo to administer bankruptcy proceedings on its own. The management of the company is still fully responsible for the operation and leads the search for investors; More than 400 employees' salaries have been guaranteed until the end of November.
Since May this year, Ibeo's management has been negotiating with potential investors, and the negotiation may continue in the next few months to try to retain the jobs of the company and its existing 400 employees.
Why can Ibeo be called the "ancestor of lidar"?
In fact, as early as 2010, Ibeo has cooperated with Valeo to develop automotive laser radar; In 2017, seven years later, behind the Audi A8, the world's first mass production lidar vehicle, is Ibeo.
But why did Ibeo end up filing for bankruptcy when it had already won the first opportunity on the layout road?
Judging from the company's statement, the main reason for applying for bankruptcy is "unable to further obtain growth financing".
Back more than 20 years since Ibeo was founded in 1998, the company has only opened two rounds of financing: first, in 2016, the auto parts giant ZF bought 40% of Ibeo's shares; The second is that in 2021, China Raytheon Technology will become a new shareholder of the company.
In addition, unlike the laser radar "Houlang", which is favored by many automobile enterprises, Ibeo's customer list is not long.
In addition to Audi mentioned above, Ibeo signed a letter of intent with Great Wall Motors in 2019. After a year of early development, Great Wall Motors Weipai WEY SUV series models will be equipped with IbeoNEXT solid-state laser radar and will be put into production in 2022.
It is worth mentioning that ZF, which acquired 40% of the shares of Ibeo, was appointed by Great Wall Motors ADAS almost at the same time as Ibeo, and began mass production and delivery.
But Ibeo is not the only laser radar supplier of Great Wall Weipai. In August this year, Suotang Juchuang announced that it would supply laser radars for Weipai flagship model Mocha DHT-PHEV laser radar.
2022 (also known as 2021) is called "the first year of mass production of lidar" by analysts from many institutions, but for Ibeo, this does not mean that the dawn is coming - lidars entering the first year of mass production are mostly semi-solid lidars.
According to the statistics of the previous report of Capital Securities, of the 13 front mounted lidar models produced in mass this year, 4 models are equipped with rotating mirror scanning lidars, 8 models are equipped with semi-solid lidars, and only one model is equipped with solid lidars.
Due to the high processing difficulty, small scanning angle and other technical difficulties that have not yet been solved, the pure solid state laser radar that Ibeo adheres to has a high cost, and it is difficult to get on the vehicle on a large scale temporarily; In contrast, the "transition scheme" semi-solid laser radar has become the mainstream choice of vehicle enterprises.
