Jan. 18, 2022 -- InvestorsHub NewsWire -- via NetworkNewsWire
Editorial Coverage: Buckle up because transportation is
evolving double quick time. It wasn’t long ago that lane keep
assist, approaching object alerts, automatic parallel parking and
much more were, at best, concepts in an engineer’s head. Now the
next generation of automotive evolution is made possible by the
wonders of LiDAR technology. It won’t be long before autonomous
driving will be a standard feature on cars. The next generation of
automobiles will redefine the driving experience, and investors can
participate in the transportation transformation in a variety
of ways, including the upcoming public listing of a leading LiDAR
company, Cepton Technologies, which aims to go public early this
year in a SPAC merger with Growth Capital Acquisition
Corp. (NASDAQ:
GCAC) (Profile). Cepton was
chosen by General Motors Company (NYSE:
GM) as its sole-source provider of lidars
for the period 2023–2027, with installation of Cepton-based lidar
sensors in as many as nine different models. Cepton is also in
various levels of engagement with all top-10 automotive OEMs
including Ford
Motor Company (NYSE: F). Others in the lidar space,
including Luminar Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:
LAZR), are trying to keep pace albeit with production
wins representing far fewer number of vehicles. Not all EV
manufacturers are opting for LiDAR tech; for example, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is
a vocal
champion for the pure vision-based approach to autonomous
driving.
- The global LiDAR market is growing at a 22.7% annual rate,
forecast to rise from $1.32 billion in 2018 to $6.71 billion by
2026.
- LiDAR company Cepton Technologies is coming public via SPAC
transaction with Growth Capital Acquisition Corp. with a valuation
of approximately $1.55 billion.
- Cepton has developed patented technology that solves problems
related to LiDAR performance, safety, reliability and cost.
- Cepton is forecasting 2025 revenue of $861 million and EBITDA
of $336 million.
Click here to view the custom infographic of
the Growth Capital Acquisition
Corp. editorial.
LiDAR Paving Way to Future of Autonomous
Vehicles
Today, most leading-edge vehicles use combinations of sonar
(sound) and radar (microwaves) in their warning systems. LiDAR, an
acronym for Light Detection and Ranging, is the next major
automotive advancement, superior to both sonar and radar for speed,
accuracy, range and quality.
Time of flight (“ToF”) LiDAR, the most popular type, rapidly
pulses infrared light off surrounding objects, measuring the
light’s reflection time to determine the distance to an object with
amazing precision. Working in unison with onboard computers, LiDAR
represents the “eyes” of a self-driving vehicle to generate a
constantly updating three-dimensional map of the road and
surrounding environment to safely maneuver with little to no human
input.
According to Fortune
Business Insights, the global LiDAR market is growing at a
22.7% annual rate. Driven by deployment into many different
applications, the market is forecast to rise from $1.32 billion in
2018 to $6.71 billion by 2026.
To say LiDAR is space-age technology is completely accurate. It
was developed by NASA to monitor satellites and measure distances
in space before it found its way into the automotive industry where
the technology continues to evolve and become miniaturized and less
expensive. While still early in the tech’s existence, the
possibilities are becoming realities in what LiDAR can do for
autonomous driving in the future.
Growth Capital Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ:
GCAC) is a special purpose acquisition company,
or SPAC for short, incorporated for the purpose of acquiring an
operating company with an enterprise value in the range of $400
million to $1.5
billion. The blank check company found its target late in
2021 in Cepton Technologies, a pioneer in the LiDAR space
that made a name for itself with an exclusive deal with General
Motors integrating with GM’s vaunted Ultra Cruise ADAS (advanced
driver assistance systems). The transaction to make Cepton a public
entity trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker CPTN is expected to
close early this quarter.
Founded in 2016, Cepton has launched multiple innovative
products and become connected with some of the biggest names in the
automotive industry, including GM and Tokyo-based global automotive
lighting equipment juggernaut Koito Manufacturing. Koito has been a
strong partner to Cepton, including a $50 million
investment in the startup. Cepton’s mission is to deploy
high-performance, mass-market LiDAR to deliver safety and autonomy
across multiple industries. In this bid, Cepton brings tier 1
partners, more than 100 active customer projects, engagement with
all top-10 original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) and more than
160 opportunities in its pipeline.
The World’s Biggest Auto Industry LiDAR Win
Effectively, LiDAR and computer chips serve as the brain of an
autonomous vehicle (“AV”), and obviously it’s no easy task to
replicate the speed and precision of a human to input process and
react to surroundings in motion. The challenges the LiDAR market
faces all relate to performance, reliability, integration, and
costs. Cepton was purpose-built to address these hurdles, with the
result being an end-to-end LiDAR solution platform including its
patented breakthrough Micro Motion
Technology (MMT(R)) for ADAS autonomous driving and smart
infrastructure applications. MMT is a novel technology of Cepton
that uses quartz-crystal-like materials rather than microscopic
mirrors of competitors’ MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical-systems)
technology, making them less expensive with better performance and
low power consumption. Low power consumption is particularly
important in electric vehicles where other components are hungry to
gobble up battery power.
The technology has been validated by the world’s leading OEMs,
developmental use in May Mobility automated shuttles, and through
the exclusive adoption of Cepton LiDARs by General Motors for its
Ultra Cruise ADAS autonomous driving platform. This marks the
largest automotive LiDAR design win to date which is about ten
times larger than all other automotive LiDAR awards combined. GM
intends to use Cepton LiDARs in up to nine different models
starting in 2023. Ultra Cruise is being trumpeted for allowing
hands-free driving on surface streets and highways which account
for about 95 percent of all roads in North America, a significant
advancement from GM’s Super Cruise tech, which is limited to
freeway use.
One Million Units on Tap
Cepton’s GM agreement represents not just the first major
production customer for the company, it also positions Cepton as
what is expected to be the first LiDAR
company in the world to go mass market across multiple
vehicle platforms. The agreement with GM was made possible through
Cepton’s relationship with Koito, which is licensing the MMT
technology and integrating it into the automotive sensors that are
going into GM vehicles equipped with GM ADAS. The initial term of
the contract is specified as four years through 2027.
“We are gratified to partner with Koito and leverage their
manufacturing and quality leadership in this pathbreaking series
production program, which I believe will set the standard for
future ADAS lidar adoption,” said Cepton
CEO and cofounder Dr. Jun Pei.
Cepton expects strong uptake from all the major OEM auto
manufacturers as well as others in the space because Cepton LiDAR
products hit the sweet spot between performance, safety,
reliability and cost. To that point, Cepton anticipates shipping
more than one million of its LiDAR units by 2025. The company
refers to subsequent sales related to integration into multiple
platforms as a “flywheel
effect,” where embedding into manufacturing ecosystems
facilitates mass volume production, which further reduces costs and
so on.
SPAC Details
Growth Capital Acquisition Corp. is a SPAC with $172.5 million
in cash and $58.5 million raised via a private investment in public
entity (“PIPE”) anchored by Koito in support of the Cepton
transaction, for approximately $231
million of pro forma cash on the balance sheet. The terms
place a pro forma firm value of $1.55 billion on Cepton, which
equates to 1.8x 2025 estimated revenue of $861 million.
The breakdown of ownership is 85% existing shareholders, 12%
SPAC IPO and founder shares, and 3% PIPE investors. From its
headquarters in California, Cepton employs 116 people, including 51
engineers and 21 PhDs focused on developing state-of-the-art,
intelligent, LiDAR-based solutions for a range of markets,
including automotive, smart cities, smart spaces and smart
industrial applications. The initial emphasis is on ADAS, the
largest-end market for LiDAR.
Autonomous Vehicles Coming Around the Bend
The world is fast accelerating towards freeways and subdivisions
chock full of autonomous vehicles shepherded by hands-free
technologies that provide full autonomy. The transportation
transformation is fully underway and will be arriving in driveways
soon. In fact, the Victoria
Transport Policy Institute thinks safe and reliable
self-driving cars will arrive in as little as three years. In the
coming decades, autonomous vehicles will likely be the new standard
of safe, affordable and reliable transportation, completely
displacing human driving and delivering incalculable savings and
benefits.
General Motors Company (NYSE:
GM) unveiled a new personal
self-driving electric concept car from its luxury brand,
Cadillac, during the recent CES technology show and plans to offer
a personal autonomous electric vehicle to consumers as soon as
mid-decade. GM will likely use the Cepton lidar to both enhance
ADAS capabilities for automatic emergency braking, pedestrian
detection and also to enable its upcoming Ultra Cruise system.
Ford
Motor Company (NYSE: F) last summer was the first
to announce a collaboration with Argo AI and Lyft where the three
partners began working together to commercialize autonomous ride
hailing at scale. The auto giant is active overall in the AV space,
including its Self-Driving Research Program designed to help
businesses understand how autonomous vehicles could benefit their
operations. In December, Ford and
DP World London Gateway conducted a trial with a simulated
autonomous vehicle to demonstrate how useful such future technology
could be to those managing — and employed on — large worksites.
Luminar Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:
LAZR), a provider of LiDAR and associated software,
has more than 50 industry partners, and in various stages of
engagement with a majority of the top global automotive OEMs. In
2020, Luminar signed the industry’s first production
deal for autonomous consumer vehicles with Volvo Cars, which now
expects to make Luminar’s technology part of the standard safety
package on their next generation electric SUV. Additional customer
wins include SAIC, Daimler Truck AG, Intel’s Mobileye, Pony.ai and
Airbus UpNext.
Tesla
(NASDAQ: TSLA) announced
fourth-quarter numbers, which included the production of more
than 305,000 vehicles and deliveries of more than 308,000 vehicles.
For the full year, the company delivered more than 936,000
vehicles. In its report, Tesla noted that delivery count should be
viewed as slightly conservative because the company only counts a
car as delivered if it is transferred to the customer and all
paperwork is correct; therefore, final numbers could vary by up to
0.5% or more.
If the Victoria Transport Policy Institute is correct, and the
institute seems to be in line with other estimates, self-driving
cars are going to be here in what will amount to the blink of an
eye. It will be a watershed moment for the industry, AV will be the
norm, and youngsters will wonder how and why humans ever drove
cars.
For more information about Growth Capital
Acquisition Corp., please visit Growth
Capital Acquisition Corp.
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