Introduction: How big the impact of the "chip" shortage on the global auto industry in 2021 may not have been imagined a few years ago.
If the auto industry has been hit hard by the epidemic in 2020, then the shortage of chips from beginning to end in 2021 will also have an impact on the auto industry. The difference is that the former has a car that cannot be sold, and the latter is not built without a car and cannot be bought.
1 The price has soared, and a core is difficult to find
The impressive news of 2021 is a car chip of a few yuan, which was sold to a few hundred yuan at a higher price, and the price increase was more than 100 times. In the end, these dealers who disrupted the market and hoarded were "severely punished" by the State Administration for Market Regulation.
Many car companies in charge of procurement in the circle of friends for help, asking for a chip, "the price is arbitrary." It's hard to imagine that this is the big guy in the purchasing department. For public companies, this affects costs and profits.
The development of the new four modernizations of automobiles has greatly increased the demand for chips in automobiles at this stage, coupled with the gradual replacement of 4G models by 5G models, the global market demand for chips is getting bigger and bigger, and the requirements are getting higher and higher. However, chip productivity is obviously unable to keep up.
At the same time, many foreign chip manufacturers have stopped production for various reasons. To make matters worse, there is also a shortage of "semiconductors", the raw materials used to produce chips. The price of chips has risen sharply, not to mention, the key is that even if the price rises, there are still many companies that cannot buy chips at all.
In this context, the "chip shortage" has become the biggest factor affecting the sales volume of the automobile market in 2021, with Volkswagen stopping production, General Motors stopping production, Toyota stopping production, Ford stopping production... It can be said that almost all multinational auto giants have not been spared, affected by the "lack of core", production suspension, production reduction storms, has seriously affected the automotive industry in various countries around the world.
In the middle of last year, some institutions predicted that the cumulative number of global automobile production suspensions in the first half of 2021 was nearly 3 million; recently, more research institutions said that it is expected that the world's automobile production will be reduced by 11.3094 million in 2021.
2 Dealers have no cars to sell
Thanks to the impact of "lack of core", the inventory of automobile dealers that have been high for two consecutive years has been completely "rescued". However, it is quite embarrassing that the dealer inventory has reversed into a state of structural shortage.
According to the results of the "Auto Dealer Inventory" survey released by the China Automobile Dealers Association, the comprehensive inventory coefficient of auto dealers has been below the warning line since June, and before that, the indicator has been above the warning line for a long time.
In fact, since the fourth quarter of 2020, the chip shortage problem has begun to appear, but thanks to the relatively high inventory level of dealers at that time, it has not had a great impact on the Chinese auto market.
However, by the second quarter of 2021, the overseas epidemic situation continued to intensify, gradually affecting the supply of automotive chips, automobile factories successively reduced production and production, dealer inventories began to decrease, and in June the inventory level entered below the warning line. As the chip shortage gradually eased in the third quarter, the impact on automobile production cuts continued to decline, and dealer inventories gradually rebounded.
Despite this, the impact of "lack of core" on the sales volume of enterprises has been irreparable. Perhaps the most intuitive is the embodiment of sales.
3 Annual sales target failed
With the continuous fermentation of chip shortages, whether it is a new force in car manufacturing or a traditional car manufacturer, there is more or less insufficient production capacity and no car to sell. At the same time, many automobile companies have not completed the annual sales targets set. In this regard, the announcements of most car companies will mention the "epidemic and lack of core".
For example, Great Wall Motor set a sales target of 1.49 million units at the beginning of the year, with an actual cumulative sales volume of 1.281 million units, with a completion rate of about 85.97%, while Geely Automobile's sales target for 2021 was 1.53 million units, with a cumulative sales volume of 1.328 million units for the whole year, with a completion rate of about 86.8%. GAC Group's 2021 goal is to increase by 10% year-on-year (that is, 2.24 million units), and the actual cumulative sales volume is 2.144 million units, with a completion rate of about 95.7%, while BYD's sales target for 2021 is 750,000 vehicles, and the actual sales volume is 740,000 vehicles, which is only 10,000 units away from achieving the full-year target.
……
Of course, the reason why it failed to complete sales, in addition to the chip reason, the epidemic is also one of the culprits, in addition, it may also be inseparable from the company itself.
After all, despite the difficult external environment, it is not a business that has not completed its goals. Changan Automobile's cumulative sales exceeded 2.3 million units last year, exceeding its annual target of 2.15 million units.
At the same time, in the U.S. market, Toyota relies on its own chip reserves to surpass GM in sales in the U.S. market and become the first car sales in the United States. It seems that a small chip can also assist.
Write at the end
As the saying goes, blessings and misfortunes depend on each other. Although the shortage of "chips" has brought a lot of impact to the automobile industry, affected by this, the stock prices of chip-related concept stocks and raw material stocks can be described as wings, and there has been a lot of growth in 2021.
In addition, it is worth vigilance that the "lack of core" of the car has exposed the risks and hidden dangers in China's automotive chip industry chain and supply chain. In fact, not only the automotive industry, but also many intelligent terminal equipment manufacturing industries are facing chip shortages.
However, the shortage of chips has also promoted the development of the chip industry to some extent. In order to better complete their delivery tasks, many companies either start chip research and development work at home, or invest in other chip manufacturing companies, showing a positive layout situation.
For example, Chinese companies such as Geely Automobile, Great Wall Motor, and SAIC Motor are strengthening their chip self-research. However, the automotive chip industry chain is complex, and it is difficult for car companies to achieve full autonomy and controllability of the industrial chain, and it may be possible to exert efforts in key areas, which will have the effect of doing more with less.