As a new interactive entrance for the future smart cockpit, the HUD track is in a critical onboarding period. At the same time, many traditional cockpit Tier1 giants are also keeping an eye on the market cake.
Just last year, BMW officially released a new generation of HUD demonstration effect, which will be first installed on the BMW NFUE KLASSE new generation concept model and is planned to be released in 2025.
BMW HUD
At the CES show at the beginning of this year, the CEO of BMW even said bluntly: In the future, BMW models will cancel the large screen inside the vehicle and adopt a new HUD method to solve the problem of human-computer interaction.
Since last year, many models under Li Auto have been equipped with large-size W-HUD as standard, which is regarded as a clear signal of the outbreak of a new track in the smart car industry.
"In the past, everyone used HUD as an assistant, and the driver would return to the dashboard if he had a problem. We hope that HUD is not just an assistant, but a complete replacement of the dashboard, so that the driver only needs to look ahead. "This is the ideal car's judgment.
"As the interface between the vehicle and the driver, the HUD can play a vital role in preventing driver distraction or fatigue," said Philipp von Hirschheydt, Head of Continental's User Experience Business Area, HUD is the intelligence of the future , Personalized display solutions.
As a supplier with a strong presence in the traditional HUD market, Continental debuted the Scenic View HUD at the CES show earlier this year, projecting the display onto a specially coated black printed area on the lower edge of the windshield, thereby creating a display on the A-pillar. The extra wide width to the A-pillars produces a sharp image.
As for the cockpit Tier1, from large screens to multi-screens, from distributed ECUs to cockpit domain controllers, the market has entered a price competition cycle for large-scale boarding. As a boarding system with a low deployment rate, HUD has an increasingly bright market prospect.
According to the monitoring data of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, from January to April 2023, 553,600 passenger cars equipped with standard HUD (W/AR) in the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports) will be delivered, a year-on-year increase of 54.98%, and continue to maintain a high level. growth trend.
In terms of installation rate, the HUD (W/AR) pre-installation rate will reach 9.78% from January to April 2023, an increase of about 3.5 percentage points year-on-year. It is expected that the first half of this year will probably exceed the 10% mark.
In terms of the average delivery price of models equipped with HUD (W/AR), it has dropped from 341,500 yuan in 2020 to 306,800 yuan this year; The rapid decline in vehicle costs has also stimulated the demand for pre-installation.
For example, FUTURUS, which has been appointed by many ideal car models, will ship about 65,000 units of HUD before 2022. On March 23 this year, the 100,000th unit rolled off the production line in Chongqing Smart Production Base. The company predicts that the total delivery of HUD products this year is expected to reach a scale of 350,000 units.
In addition, for local suppliers, the next stage of market opportunities will extend from self-owned brands to joint venture brands. For example, Huayang obtained the HUD fixed-point project from Dongfeng Honda.
Recently, Chiyun Technology, a HUD start-up company, announced that it has received tens of millions of strategic financing from Desay SV. At the same time, the two parties have also reached a strategic cooperation to provide HUD solutions to the market, including AR-HUD with innovative technology routes, which will be jointly developed by the two companies.
Just during this year's Shanghai Auto Show, Desay SV released the Smart Solution 2.0, a smart travel solution, which introduced the AR-HUD cooperated by both parties, thus further improving Desay SV's smart cockpit solution.
In recent years, the business performance of Desay SV has grown rapidly. In 2022, the company's operating income will be 14.933 billion yuan, exceeding 10 billion yuan for the first time, and the company's net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies will be 1.184 billion yuan, exceeding 1 billion yuan for the first time, both hitting record highs.
However, from the perspective of the growth rate of the business sector, Desay SV’s smart cockpit business revenue will be 11.755 billion yuan in 2022. Although the business contribution is still as high as 78.72% (decreasing year by year), the growth rate of 47.97% lags behind smart driving business and networking services.
At present, traditional entertainment hosts, display assemblies, LCD instruments and cockpit domain controllers are the main force of Desay SV smart cockpit business revenue. This time, Desay SV entered the HUD track, on the one hand, looking at the potential growth opportunities in the market, on the other hand, it is also to enhance the anti-risk ability of the cockpit system business.
For start-up companies, it is not easy for HUD to enter the pre-installation market. In fact, judging from the monitoring data of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, in the past few years, only a few companies such as Huayang, Zejing, and FUTURUS have achieved breakthroughs.
But the trend of localization has been clear.
The data shows that in terms of suppliers, the pre-installed data from January to April this year shows that the share of domestic suppliers reached 48.02%, and it is expected to break through the 50% mark in the first half of this year. This means that the pattern of traditional Japanese and European suppliers monopolizing the traditional HUD market has been completely broken.
For example, Huayang's HUD business customer base continues to expand, and mass production projects and new fixed-point projects continue to increase. Since the beginning of this year, the company's HUD business has newly undertaken orders from many customers such as SAIC Volkswagen, Changan, Geely, SAIC, Chery, NIO, and Celes.
At the same time, benefiting from the continuous in-depth development of Chinese independent brands in vehicle intelligence, the application experience of HUD is also rapidly upgrading. For example, the latest OTA of Ideal Auto launched a new HUD snow mode to improve the display effect in the snow environment (white background).
At the same time, the integration of HUD and assisted driving is also accelerating. This means that HUD is no longer just an accessory hardware for traditional instrument information display. For example, on the ideal W-HUD, the information display function of assisted driving has been added.
The sharp drop in the cost of boarding a car will also release a huge potential demand space.
According to the monitoring data of Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Research Institute, the delivery volume of passenger cars equipped with HUD (W/AR) in the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports) in 2022 will reach 1,410,500 units, compared with the standard configuration (1,522,000 units) quite.
Currently, Desay SV is recruiting personnel for HUD-related positions . For example, the salary of some HUD product managers reaches 20-30k·15. They will start to participate in customer communication, conduct research and analysis on potential product demand in the market, and lead the internal feasibility assessment. , technical solution discussion and quotation.
At the same time, the company is also laying out the development of AR HUD software algorithms, as well as middleware algorithms, HMI, MCU, optical-mechanical interface applications, and communication development. In addition, while investing in Chiyun Technology, Desay SV is also leading the key optical design and development of HUD products.
In March of this year, Desay SV and Hunan University released the "AR HUD Development Trend Report", which specifically pointed out that: AR HUD, as the entrance and carrier of intelligent and networked applications, is to accelerate innovation and improve the value chain. One of the focus points of the level.
At the same time, the intelligentization of automobiles is entering a new era of connected vehicles. AR HUD will be able to reach more nodes in the future, present rich information such as surrounding restaurants and parking spaces in a visualized manner, and continue to bring new possibilities for intelligent transportation.
According to the forecast data of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute , in 2023, the Chinese market (excluding import and export) is expected to deliver more than 2.5 million W-HUD/AR HUD front-mounted units. By 2025, AR HUD front-mounted The volume will exceed one million units per year, and the W/AR HUD deployment rate will exceed 30%.
However, for the HUD track, Guo Jianxin, the chief engineer of Desay SV’s in-vehicle display, said in public before, “The company has not entered the HUD field for a long time, so there is a certain gap compared with domestic counterparts, and international counterparts. Then the gap is bigger."
At the same time, Guo Jianxin said frankly that the cost factor is a more important key point for the domestic market to install HUD. This will inevitably cause the performance indicators of some components to be lower than the standards of international car manufacturers.
In addition, as Jingwei Hengrun (mass production this year), Desay SV and other listed companies have successively entered the HUD track, and Huayang, Crystal Optoelectronics and other listed companies that have achieved mass production and delivery, follow-up for Zejing, etc. For many non-listed companies, the pressure of market competition continues to intensify.