Hesai said it delivered more than 100,000 LiDARs in December, the first LiDAR maker in the world to reach the milestone.

Chinese LiDAR maker Hesai Group (NASDAQ: HSAI) today announced that it delivered more than 100,000 LiDARs in December, the first LiDAR maker in the world to reach the milestone.

The company delivered more than 20,000 units of LiDAR products for robotics in a single month, which are used in a variety of areas including mobile robots, delivery robots, sweeping robots, and lawn mowing robots, it said.

In 2025, Hesai has planned annual production capacity of more than 2 million units, the company said.

Hesai is one of the largest LiDAR makers in China, and its products are mainly used in ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) for automobiles.

In the first three quarters of the year, Hesai shipped 263,148 units of ADSA LiDARs, contributing 94 percent of all LiDAR shipments of 279,835 units, according to its third-quarter earnings report.

On December 27, Hesai said it received new LiDAR orders for more than 10 models from three of the top five selling local brands.

This expands Hesai's customers to 21 automakers, with products being used in more than 100 models, according to the company.

These new customers will launch several new models in 2025 with Hesai's compact, ultra-high-definition LiDAR ATX, it said.

Launched in April of this year, the ATX will begin mass use in production vehicles in the first quarter of 2025, the company said.

In the smart electric vehicle (EV) space, there is an ongoing debate about whether or not vehicles should be equipped with LiDARs.

Tesla is the foremost proponent of a pure vision smart driving solution, and its management has expressed its dislike for LiDAR many times over the past few years. Currently, none of Tesla's models have any LiDAR.

Among Chinese EV makers, Xpeng (NYSE: XPEV) was one of the first to put LiDARs on its vehicles, though the company ditched the use of the component for its new sedan, the P7+, which it launched on November 7, in favor of a Tesla-like pure vision solution.

Nio (NYSE: NIO) branded models now come with the component, though it is not used in models from sub-brand Onvo.

Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI) -- one of Hesai's customers -- currently uses the component its models' higher-priced variants, and its founder, chairman, and CEO Li Xiang said earlier this month that the company's models will continue to use LiDARs in the future.

If Tesla CEO Elon Musk ever drove on a Chinese highway at night, the US EV maker would also use LiDARs, Li said on December 26.

Tesla would use LiDAR if Elon Musk ever drove on China's highways at night, Li Auto CEO says