Industry Development Trend of Automotive Lens

The autonomous driving industry is developing rapidly, and China is rapidly expanding its market.

1. The penetration rate of autonomous driving has increased, and the growth of the automotive lens industry may be accelerated

The rapid growth in the use of automotive bicycle lenses and the obvious improvement in specifications have driven the development of the automotive lens industry to usher in a rise in both volume and price, while the cost of the vision solution hardware bicycle occupancy is not high, about a few thousand yuan, so the pace of penetration in OEMs is fast. Therefore, it can be foreseen that the growth of the industry in the future may shift and speed up.

We believe that the development of the lens automotive industry is closely related to the level of auto-driving, that is, the number and specifications of cameras that need to be mounted on vehicles with different functions are different. According to our judgment, the number of lenses used for L2-level autonomous driving is 5-8, the number of L3-level lenses used is about 10, and more cameras are needed to achieve L4/L5-level autonomous driving.

The pixel gap between the front-view, surround-view, rear-view, side-view and other automotive lenses on the car will be further widened. For example, the mainstream recognized configuration uses 5/8M pixels for front-view and 2/3M pixels for surround-view. The pixel specifications of all car lenses below 2M have been significantly improved.

2. High standards for automotive lenses: performance, reliability, and certification cycle

In addition to the basic requirements of temperature resistance, shock resistance, waterproof and dustproof, corrosion resistance, service life and other common car-level requirements that need to be met, automotive lenses need to solve temperature drift, high-pass light, stray light ghosting, distortion, optical performance in terms of optical performance. Of course, there are differences in the performance requirements of lenses in different positions. The optical performance requirements of front-view ADAS lenses are the highest, and the value is also high.

The stability and consistency of quality and the control of dynamic quality require lens manufacturers to accumulate knowledge in materials, design and craftsmanship for a long time, and test manufacturers' cognition and understanding of lens components.

Due to the high performance and reliability requirements of automotive lenses, the certification cycle of automotive lenses is long. The supply cycle from product development, laboratory testing, road testing to final mass production is usually 2-3 years. Of course, the certification cycles of different functional lenses are also different, and the time cycle sequence is ADAS, surround view, and rear view application lenses.

With the influx of many players in China, the industry structure may change, and Chinese manufacturers are expected to quickly respond to the needs of domestic car companies to accelerate intelligentization with the advantages of high cooperation, cost, performance, and rapid delivery in the future, and continue to explore overseas markets and grasp the window of pattern reshaping under the current industrial chain reform.

As a core subsidiary of Sunny Optical Technology Co., Ltd. (Sunny Group), Ningbo Sunny Automotive Optech Co., Ltd. is a national high-tech and demonstration manufacturing enterprise that provides the optical solution. Dedicated to automotive lens industry for several decades, Sunny’s products are widely used on cars of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Toyota, Honda, Chrysler, Ford, GM, Volkswagen, Volvo, etc. Moreover, as the largest Chinese company in automotive lens field and the most capable manufacturer of automotive lens in the world, Sunny has held the largest global market share for ten consecutive years.