Chinese lidar maker Hesai on Monday announced plans to double its production capacity from 2 million to 4 million units this year, aiming to corner the global market for laser-based sensors. This will significantly exceed Hesai’s sales of more than 1 million units in 2025.
Hesai’s efforts to gain more market share come just a month after leading U.S. LiDAR maker Luminar filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company is not expected to continue operating if its bankruptcy plan is approved, but it is considering selling its lidar business.
Hesai has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the past few years and is currently listed on both the Nasdaq and Hong Kong stock exchanges. That’s despite the company’s uphill battle with the U.S. government, which accused it of working closely with China’s military industry — a charge Kasai disputes.
At the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Hesai told reporters that “accelerating demand” in the automotive and robotics industries allowed the company to double its production goals.
The company’s automotive efforts have been boosted by the adoption of lidar sensors in the Chinese car market, with Kasai saying that 25% of new electric vehicles sold in the country are now equipped with lidar sensors. He also claimed that many new cars in China are expected to be equipped with three to six LiDAR sensors per vehicle, “the market that Hesai can address will expand significantly.” Hesai boasts 24 automotive customers, including “top European car manufacturers,” and said it has 4 million orders for its latest ATX LiDAR sensors.
Outside of China, the automotive market has proven to be a fickle market for LiDAR sensors. That contributed to Luminar’s bankruptcy, according to the company’s own bankruptcy filing. Luminar won contracts to integrate its LiDAR sensors into vehicles from Volvo, Polestar, and Mercedes-Benz, but those plans fell through. Volvo at one point agreed to buy 1.1 million lidar sensors from Luminar, but delays and cost overruns in the new car program caused the Swedish automaker to back out of the deal. (Volvo ended up purchasing only about 10,000 sensors from Luminar.)
While there is no guarantee that robotics will succeed in the LIDAR sensor market, some players other than Hesai see great potential. San Francisco-based Auster, which acquired rival Velodyne in 2023 as the lidar industry began to consolidate, said it believes there is a $14 billion market opportunity in robotics. This includes not only humanoid robots, but also last-mile delivery robots and military applications.
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At CES, Hesai is exhibiting a robotic lawn mower and a robotic dog that use the company’s JT series LIDAR sensors. The company also indicated that it would be similarly adopted for humanoid robots. The company has contracts to provide LIDAR sensors to self-driving car companies such as Pony AI, Motional, WeRide, and Baidu.
Hesai also boasted that he helped reduce the cost of LIDAR sensors by 99.5% in just eight years. That also contributed to Luminar’s downfall. “Cost-cutting pressure from China-based competitors’ lower price points” is regularly cited in the company’s bankruptcy filings as the second most important factor explaining why the U.S. company has found it so difficult to build a self-sustaining business.
