On one hand, as LiDAR costs continue to decline, applications are gradually expanding to lower-priced vehicle models, leading to sustained improvement in LiDAR penetration rates in the automotive sector in recent years. On the other hand, due to the expansion of robot applications, LiDAR shipments for robotics are showing growth several times higher than previous levels. Currently, LiDAR remains in its industry growth phase with broad prospects.
Recently, major LiDAR manufacturers Hesai Group and ROBOSENSE released their latest performance results, with Hesai Group achieving quarterly profitability for the first time. Looking at Q2 alone, Hesai Group achieved revenue of 706 million yuan, up 53.9% year-over-year and 34.5% quarter-over-quarter, with net profit of 44 million yuan, compared to -72 million yuan in Q2 2024 and -18 million yuan in Q1 2025, successfully turning profitable. By business segment, the company's product revenue in Q2 reached 700 million yuan, up 71.1% year-over-year and 37.1% quarter-over-quarter, with year-over-year growth mainly benefiting from strong demand in the Chinese market and increased shipments and sales revenue of ADAS LiDAR products. Total LiDAR shipments reached 352,100 units, up 306.9% year-over-year and 79.8% quarter-over-quarter.
Robotics LiDAR shipments surged significantly, becoming an operational highlight for the industry since 2025. In Q2 2025, ROBOSENSE achieved total revenue of 455 million yuan, up 24% year-over-year and 39% quarter-over-quarter, mainly driven by high-speed growth in robotics revenue. In terms of profitability, Q2 gross profit reached 130 million yuan, up 133% year-over-year and 64% quarter-over-quarter, while net loss was 50 million yuan, significantly narrowed from the 140 million yuan net loss in the same period last year. For the first half of 2025, ROBOSENSE achieved revenue of 783 million yuan, up 7.7% year-over-year, with gross profit of 203 million yuan, up 79.41% year-over-year, gross margin of 25.9%, improving by 12.3 percentage points, and net loss of 149 million yuan, significantly reduced from the previous year's loss of 269 million yuan. Sales volumes of its LiDAR products, LiDAR products for ADAS applications, and LiDAR products for robotics and other applications were approximately 266,800 units, 220,500 units, and 46,300 units respectively, representing year-over-year changes of +9.6%, -6.0%, and +420.2% respectively.
Cost Reduction Drives Penetration Rate Improvement
In the assisted driving field, the debate between pure vision solutions and multi-sensor fusion approaches has been ongoing. From current automaker choices, except for Tesla's pure vision route, multi-sensor fusion solutions equipped with LiDAR remain mainstream, mainly because in perception systems, multiple sensors can provide backup when others fail or misjudge, ensuring reliable system operation at critical moments.
With LiDAR cost reduction, penetration rates have improved. In recent years, benefiting from continuous advancement in chip-based and platform-based technologies, LiDAR manufacturing costs have dropped significantly, and with continued expansion of manufacturing scale, costs continue to decline. From 2020-2024, ROBOSENSE's average LiDAR selling price decreased from 18,000 yuan to 2,800 yuan, a decline of about 84%; Hesai Group's average selling price dropped from 82,000 yuan to 3,900 yuan, a decline of 95%. Benefiting from substantial cost reductions, in 2024, the number of Chinese passenger cars with standard LiDAR equipment reached 1.362 million vehicles, with overall installation rate improving to 6.0%. This undoubtedly favors rapid penetration of LiDAR in mid-to-low price passenger cars.
For example, 2024 saw the first appearance of 5 vehicle models under 200,000 yuan equipped with LiDAR. This change indicates that LiDAR technology will further enter the mass market, no longer being exclusive to mid-to-high-end vehicle models. As hardware costs continue to decrease, the 100,000-200,000 yuan vehicle segment will become an important competitive market for LiDAR.
Price declines have driven increased OEM shipments. In terms of shipment volume, Hesai Group's ADAS LiDAR deliveries in 2024 reached 456,400 units, up 134.2% year-over-year, and Q1 2025 ADAS LiDAR deliveries were 146,100 units, up 178.5% year-over-year. ROBOSENSE's 2024 ADAS LiDAR deliveries reached 519,800 units, up 113.9% year-over-year, with sales gross margin improving from -7.41% in 2022 to 23.49% in Q1 2025; Hesai Group's sales gross margin recovered from 35.24% in 2023 to 41.74% in Q1 2025.
The popularization of assisted driving will also promote LiDAR penetration rate improvement, with significant room for future enhancement. Currently, domestic assisted driving is in the L2 level popularization stage, with some automakers beginning the transition from L2 to L3 levels in passenger cars. As of the first half of 2024, the penetration rate of L2 level or above has exceeded 50%, and it's expected to reach 70% in 2025. In the future, L2 level assisted driving penetration rates in vehicle models under 200,000 yuan have significant room for improvement. As of the end of 2023, 200,000-300,000 yuan vehicle models had the highest assisted driving penetration rate, exceeding 60%; penetration rates for models under 200,000 yuan were relatively low, with 100,000-200,000 yuan models not reaching 40% penetration, and models under 100,000 yuan basically lacking L2 level assisted driving functionality.
Since the beginning of the year, multiple automakers have accelerated assisted driving implementation, driving demand for LiDAR. Chang'an Automobile announced that starting from 2025, it will no longer develop non-intelligent new products, planning to launch 35 digital and intelligent new vehicles over the next three years. BYD released the "Eye of the Gods C" advanced assisted driving system and 21 initial vehicle models equipped with it, covering vehicle prices from 70,000-200,000 yuan, bringing advanced assisted driving functions down to the under-100,000 yuan market.
BOCOM International points out that with large-scale implementation of advanced assisted driving, automotive requirements for environmental perception accuracy and reliability are becoming increasingly stringent. LiDAR, with its high resolution and strong anti-interference capability, has become a key sensor for achieving safe assisted driving, leading to surging market demand.
Beyond the passenger car market, LiDAR's potential in the robotics field is an important source of industry growth.
Robotics Brings New Growth
Since 2025, the robotics market has become LiDAR's second growth curve. Although assisted driving and robotics have different requirements for LiDAR, the robotics field has relatively less harsh working environments and lower reliability requirements compared to automotive-grade standards, so automotive-grade LiDAR technology can be applied to robotics scenarios with certain adjustments.
Rapid sales growth by the aforementioned LiDAR manufacturers is partly due to capturing the robotics incremental market. According to OFweek Industry Research Center data, in 2024, Hesai Group and ROBOSENSE held 24% and 15.8% market share respectively in the robotics field. In Q1 2025, Hesai Group's robotics deliveries reached 49,731 units, up 649.1% year-over-year. ROBOSENSE's Q1 2025 robotics LiDAR product sales were approximately 11,900 units, up 183.3% year-over-year, achieving revenue of 73.4 million yuan, up 87.0% year-over-year. ROBOSENSE has provided incremental components and solutions to over 2,600 robotics and other industry clients, including Alibaba Cainiao, Unitree Robotics, and Gaussin Robotics.
According to IFR and China Electronics Society statistics, the global robotics market maintains high-speed growth momentum. International Federation of Robotics data shows global robotics sales have grown continuously since 2020, from $34.3 billion in 2020 to $66.0 billion in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 17.8%. China Electronics Society data shows China's robotics market size has grown continuously since 2020, from $17.4 billion in 2020 to $47.0 billion in 2024, with an annual compound growth rate of 14.3%.
Currently, new LiDAR applications in robotics are mainly concentrated in consumer-grade robots. According to Hugo Cross-border data, global lawn mower robot penetration rates increased from 4.3% to 7.5% from 2020-2024, with significant room for future penetration rate improvement.
For humanoid robots, according to GGII calculations, the 2024 global humanoid robot market size was approximately $1 billion, corresponding to annual shipments of 11,900 units. Projections indicate market size expansion to $15.1 billion by 2030, corresponding to annual sales of 60,000 units; by 2035, global humanoid robot shipments will reach 4 million units, corresponding to an average annual growth rate of 70.6% from 2024-2035. Assuming each robot is equipped with one standard LiDAR unit, LiDAR installations in the robotics field will reach 4 million units by 2035.
Overall, the LiDAR market has grown rapidly in recent years. According to Dongxing Securities, the global LiDAR market size is expected to have reached 51.2 billion yuan in 2024. For the Chinese market, in 2022, China's LiDAR market size was 2.64 billion yuan. With continuous breakthroughs and upgrades in intelligent technology, China's LiDAR market has entered the fast lane. According to China Merchants Industry Research Institute projections, market size could reach 43.18 billion yuan by 2026, with an average annual growth rate of 101%.
In fact, before 2023, robotics was the core application for LiDAR. According to China Merchants Industry Research Institute, in 2022, robotics applications accounted for 68.2% market share, representing the largest overall market segment, while intelligent driving automobiles and other application fields accounted for 28.7% and 3.1% respectively. However, due to rapid growth in automotive applications, ADAS LiDAR shipments have recently surpassed robotics.
Since 2025, AI-driven humanoid robots have welcomed explosive growth, accelerating LiDAR application progress. Humanoid robot companies like Unitree, Zhiyuan, and US-based Agility are all using LiDAR. Currently, LiDAR functions are mainly demonstrated in navigation SLAM. Cameras have strong near-distance perception capabilities but significantly decline beyond half a meter; LiDAR complements this, significantly improving robot perception capabilities in complex environments.
In terms of customer cooperation, since 2025, consumer-grade robotics LiDAR shipments have accelerated. According to GGII data, Hesai Group ranked first in Chinese robotics LiDAR shipments in the first half of 2025. By the end of Q2, less than 5 months after the JT series launch, cumulative deliveries exceeded 100,000 units, creating a global record and becoming the preferred choice of leading global lawn mower robot manufacturers. Recently, partnerships were announced with Vbot and Siderdance. In April, Hesai Group reached a strategic cooperation agreement with Dreame's ecosystem partner Keting Technology, with Hesai Group providing 300,000 LiDAR units over the next year for Dreame lawn mower robots; ROBOSENSE received a 1.2 million unit order from Kuka for lawn mowers. In the future, humanoid robot applications remain an important incremental field for the industry.