This year's "fire" of car shortage is still spreading, and the shortage of auto chips is still bothering auto manufacturers.
Due to the shortage of chips, Volkswagen, Europe's largest carmaker, has lost its market share in China. British car production also plunged to a new low since 1956 in July. There are many such messages. After this painful battle, some unprecedented changes are taking place in the automotive chip supply chain.
What's special about car chips?
Students who know something about the chip industry may say that the car specification chip is not high-tech, the process of mobile phone chip is 5nm, and most of the car specification chip process can be 28nm, or even 45nm.
Although the vehicle specification chip does not need the most advanced process, it has higher requirements in other aspects than the consumer chip. For example, the adaptability to the environment. Because the driving environment of the vehicle is very diverse and complex, it needs to cross the requirements of extreme temperature, humidity, electromagnetic interference and so on; And cars generally have 15 years of accessibility requirements, so the service life of vehicle specification chip must be more than 15 years.
Therefore, in terms of comprehensive life and adaptability, vehicle specification chip has always had a very large development space.
Before the Mid Autumn Festival, Infineon announced that its 300 mm thin wafer power semiconductor chip factory in filach, Austria, was officially launched and put into operation. At the press conference, Infineon also announced that the new factory will also serve the needs of the automotive industry, data centers, and renewable energy power generation fields such as solar energy and wind energy.
And the first batch of wafers in the new factory have been shipped. The chip is manufactured on a 300 mm thin wafer, which is only 40 microns thick, thinner than human hair.
It can be seen that today's chip market has begun to roll up.
How big is the power semiconductor market?
Now that we have talked about the vehicle specification chip, we have to mention the relevant power semiconductors. As the general electric vehicle battery stores DC, the motor uses AC, and the power semiconductor is responsible for converting the current nature.
According to the prediction of the agency, the average annual compound growth rate of China's new energy vehicle market will be 34% from 2021 to 2025, while the vehicle will change from fuel to electric, the cost structure will be reshaped, with less engine system and more three electricity system, and the electricity to be processed will suddenly increase.
Corresponding to the reshaping of the cost structure, the value of power semiconductors increased from $71 for fuel vehicles to $330 for electric vehicles, an increase of 360%. According to McKinsey's prediction, the market scale of automotive power semiconductors will increase from US $4.5 billion in 2020 to US $9.2 billion in 2025, with an average annual compound growth rate of 15%.
In addition to fuel vehicles and electric vehicles, power semiconductors are also widely used downstream. Automotive electronics, industrial control, solar energy, wind power, data center, computer, lighting, rail transit and consumer electronics are inseparable from power semiconductors.
Opportunities brought by car core shortage
In the downstream market of power semiconductors, new energy vehicles are undoubtedly one of the hot spots in the market.
The global output of new energy vehicles continued to rise, and the proportion of new energy vehicles in passenger vehicles also increased rapidly. With the emergence of new car manufacturers such as Tesla, BYD, Weilai, Xiaopeng and ideal, traditional car manufacturers are not willing to be weak. Manufacturers such as GM, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Renault, Nissan Mitsubishi alliance and BMW have also increased the output of new energy vehicles. The power semiconductor market has also increased with the increase of the output of new energy vehicles.
At the same time, the value of power discrete devices, power ICs and electric vehicle electronic control modules for vehicles, especially new energy vehicles, is becoming higher and higher.
Among the major automotive systems, the value of some power devices in powertrain is the largest, followed by chassis & safety, body and convention, as well as infotainment and ADAS systems.
The powertrain subsystem of new energy passenger vehicles relies on IGBT electronic control module to provide strong power.
With the high requirements for stability of vehicle specification chips, general vehicle enterprises will not switch suppliers in the development process of new models. The cycle from project start to mass production of new models is at least 2 years, which requires a lot of verification and demand response. Therefore, once the formal mass production, it will have a supply cycle of at least 5 years.
Therefore, if new energy vehicle manufacturers want to maintain the stability of their products and market development, the demand for chip suppliers is basically determined that one is one and will not be replaced easily. Even now the market is not in demand for supply, it can't afford this time to increase costs.
At present, none of the top ten semiconductor assembly suppliers (NXP, Renesas electronics, Infineon, etc.) is Chinese. If we can seize the current empty window period of each host factory and win orders, China's own vehicle specification chip products can take a share of the chip market surrounded by wolves and feed back technology with orders, The domestic replacement of chips is also just around the corner.
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