In the following September, XPeng P5 with Livox HAP was officially launched. The challenges, however, did not end there. On-time delivery of the initial batch was only the first step, and lying ahead were enormous supply chain hurdles arising from rapidly growing orders for XPeng P5.

1. Being a pioneer means you have no prior experience to fall back on.

2. With multiple delays caused by chip shortages, we had to invest significantly more resources to test alternative solutions.

3. There was no turning back for us after we had received nearly tenfold the amount of expected customer orders.

“It was an incredible challenge, much like crossing a river. But instead of feeling our way through the water with the rocks, we were stumbling across only to realize, while in the middle of the river, that a mountain torrent was heading our way. Whether we pressed on or fell back, the chances of survival were 50%. So, all we could do was pick up our pace and forged ahead,” project manufacturing manager Zhang Wenda said. Despite the gargantuan task, the goal could not be clearer for the teams:
 

To deliver a tenfold increase in production capacity within three to four months from September.

Fast forward to this day, HAP production has achieved its target capacity 12 months ago, and XPeng P5 with Livox HAP is now a common sight on the roads. To document the entire process, we interviewed team members who were deeply involved in the project and share the highlights and their insights in this article.

The team brainstormed on project risks and discussed solutions at a project manufacturing meeting

Photographed in January 2021

As the HAP product manager, Shao Peiyuan shared the same sentiments as Li Shuai: “Fundamentally, these issues that he mentioned stem from common challenges facing the LiDAR industry today.”

Even as the industry moves from mechanical to hybrid solid-state technology, LiDARs remain the type of automotive sensors with the highest precision requirements. Due to the complexity of these products, they pose a greater challenge to a manufacturer’s production and hardware capabilities.

Over the past decade, most manufacturers shipped only hundreds or thousands of mechanical LiDARs per year on average, with their production methods being essentially manual. However, as we advance to pre-installing LiDARS for mass production, the target capacity increases to thousands or even tens of thousands of units a month, which drives the need to transform the mass production of LiDARs urgently.

“While Elon Musk may not like the application of LiDARs in cars, I do agree with him on the topic of production at scale, that “the machine that makes the machine is vastly harder than the machine itself” said Peiyuan. Before 2021, the focus of many players in the industry was on the explicit parameters of products, such as their detection range, FOV, resolution, and precision, as well as price-performance ratio. But since ushering in pre-installed LiDARs, we have had to explore the iceberg below the water, meaning to look closer at underlying aspects such as our engineering, manufacturing and organizational capacity.

The industry has entered a new era where players will be competing on multiple levels.

Successful product delivery hinges upon the combination of manifest and underlying abilities

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The innovative modular design allows the production line to be modified at a minimal scale within specific modules to address any design changes. A flexible production line greatly mitigates late deliveries caused by external issues during short lead times, and limits the impact of design changes on the overall production framework.
 

This was the first critical decision that the Livox team had to make early in the project. “Decision-making” is different from “standard process management”. Standard production-line management principles concerning “people, machines, materials, methods, and environments” are applicable in most cases––as long as the team is focused and skilled enough, they will find the one best solution, just as they would in answering a multiple-choice question. “Decision-making”, on the other hand, is subjective and it usually takes a longer time to check the outcome of a decision. Zhang Wenda said: “I had to answer a classic question in a written test for this job interview. ‘A high-speed train is about to hit five people. If you divert the train to another track, only one person will get hit. What would you do?’ At the time, I felt that the question was irrelevant to working in the real world. But now I understand its purpose. The company was trying to find out about the values that supported our decision-making, through behavioral models.”

But whether a partnership is truly win-win has to be tested over a long term, while the making of short-term decisions is easily motivated by self-interest. At the time, the Livox team had a single belief: “Since we’re in the B2B line, our success depends on that of our customers and whether we create value for them. We must be aligned with and share the same values and goals as our customers.” From another perspective, the fact that XPeng, an industry leader, chose to work with Livox for their first LiDAR project meant that they had faith in us and we must never let them down.

“I feel like the team has grown over the course of the project. It was more than accomplishing a mission, as we also had an opportunity to mature and develop ourselves mentally. We will still face many unknowns like this in the future. After this experience, our team members began looking at things from a broader perspective, and our marketing team has revamped their strategies to focus on serving existing customers well and ensuring their needs are met,” said Li Shuai.

The Livox and supplier teams commissioning workstations at the production line

“In addition to dynamic balance, the stability of electrical performance is also a key determining factor for product life and reliability,” Li added. The quality of the plugins and circuit connections is critical. To ensure reliable circuit connections, the commissioning of workstations has become one of the most crucial processes in the assembly line.

From the principles of fusion welding to incorporating them into the product design, the Livox team conducted detailed research into the differences between various welding techniques, including the choice of welding wire, temperature resistance of components, thermal conductivity of circuit boards, selection of tooling materials, and even the cleaning frequency for welding nozzles and their preheating time. Finally, after nearly 100 DOE tests and more than 20 slice analyses, the production process achieved a stable permeability of over 75% and a yield of more than 99.7%.

Besides making breakthroughs in typical processes such as dynamic balancing and fusion welding, the team has investigated and resolved difficulties in numerous other production aspects. Each challenge not only tested the technology, cost control, and delivery timeline on our end, but also mounted pressure on our suppliers. “Before this, most of the suppliers were used to catering for traditional vehicle-mounted devices and sophisticated production lines. But now, our partners were willing to explore building LiDAR production lines with Livox. Not only have we overcome new challenges throughout the entire process, from equipment design, process innovation, to operation, we have also gained a deeper understanding of where the industry is heading in terms of technology and how best we can work together as partners,” shared Mingyuan. They have been an invaluable partner to Livox in its journey of driving innovation and progress in the automation of production lines for automotive-grade LiDARs.

IF NOT ME, WHO? IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

In five years, we have successfully incubated six industrial-grade platforms, and the experience forms a solid foundation for Livox’s production testing technology. However, what was constantly on the mind of product manager Peiyuan was how the production line under test could meet the automotive-grade management standards and achieve zero defects in product delivery.

Hardly any user of XPeng P5 would know that the “square box” under their headlights has undergone more than 850 rigorous tests for roadworthiness to provide them with a safer and more comfortable driving experience.

In just six months, the production test team successfully built the first complete and fully automated production line for automotive-grade LiDARs in the industry, having accomplished various project stages from conception, design, commissioning, to operation. The team also improved the project’s UPH productivity by up to six times and first-pass yield to 95% from an initial 10%.

Gu Yue, head of production testing, was by nature a no-nonsense man. However, when he started talking about how once they had to work around the clock over two weeks to resolve production test issues, he perked up and turned surprisingly talkative.

“For a period of two weeks last year, I basically slept in the factory. At the time, the situation was very tense with the building and commissioning of the production line. It also didn’t help that our colleagues from sales had told us that the customer had added a lot more delivery criteria for their orders, which meant we needed to scale up our production capacity within a shorter time. So the testing team had to be responsible for not just the test results, but also the overall efficiency of the production line. We decided to review the UPH and first-pass yield on a daily basis, and form a daily action plan right after identifying the critical issues at hand. Then we would go off and fight our battles, then reconvene the next morning to evaluate the new results.”

Even as a “veteran” who has been involved in testing and process onboarding since the team’s founding in 2016, Gu admitted that the challenges of this project were unprecedented. Nonetheless, during those dark two weeks, his only thought was: “The fate of the industry’s first automotive-grade LiDAR production line lies in my hands”. Driven by such strong passion and determination, he overcame all hurdles and delivered outcomes that went beyond expectations.

It’s more than making products

it’s the forging of our spirit