Jiwei network news, in the semiconductor abnormal cycle and automobile transformation period, the global automotive industry is in a tortuous forward stage of development. At the same time, the news of new car manufacturing forces constantly refreshing monthly delivery records has also stimulated traditional car manufacturers to accelerate the transformation to smart electric vehicles.
The big impact of the change is the mid-level automotive electronics manufacturers. On the one hand, the shortage of upstream chips has caused them to suffer the default loss caused by the delay in delivery of products to car companies; more importantly, the price surge caused by the shortage of materials has directly caused these small and medium-sized automotive electronics manufacturers to suffer high losses.
The price increased by more than 10 times, and the loss was tens of millions
Globally, after a 12% increase in sales in 2017, global automotive MCUs grew by only 1% in 2018. In 2019, the global recession stalled consumer demand for new cars, and the ensuing COVID-19 pandemic hit the global economy hard in 2020. Weak sales growth and heavy blows to the market demand side have put pressure on automotive MCU semiconductor manufacturers, and also laid the groundwork for the serious shortage of goods that the automotive industry is now experiencing.
In the summer of 2020, the global epidemic was gradually brought under control, the automotive and other end markets gradually stabilized, and demand recovered at the end of the year. However, the recovery of MCU and other automotive semiconductor production and deliveries lagged behind the rebound in market demand.
To this day, the MCU of overseas large manufacturers is still out of stock, resulting in the supply of MCUs of automotive electronics manufacturers can not keep up; more market factors have led to soaring prices, causing downstream manufacturers to suffer losses. On December 16, 2021, Shu Jueting, spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce, said in response to a reporter's question that we are also soberly aware that the current development of foreign trade is still facing many uncertain, unstable and unbalanced factors, the global epidemic situation is repeated, the international situation is complex, the shortage of chip supply is difficult to fundamentally alleviate in the short term, and the comprehensive cost of enterprises remains high.
According to the person in charge of an automotive electronics manufacturer in Guangzhou, "We have been using the MCUs of overseas manufacturers before, and have successfully completed the verification test of automotive electronic products, but due to the lack of cores, the price of our MCU in 2021 has risen by at least 10 times, and the loss caused by the chip alone has reached tens of millions." This, combined with the increase in the price of other materials, has led to heavy losses in 2021. ”
After more than 2 months, when Jiwei Network asked the manufacturer again, the person in charge said that the current overseas manufacturer's automotive MCUs are still high in price. As for when the stockouts will really ease, the person expects to be until 2023.
In fact, "the lack of cores will be alleviated by 2023" is also the view of many chip leading enterprises. Mark Papermaster, AMD's chief technology officer and executive vice president, believes that the silicon industry may eventually reach a supply-demand balance in 2023. Cai Lixing, vice chairman of MediaTek, also said that expanding the market to the industry, it is estimated that the supply of chips by 2022 is still very scarce, and new production capacity must be significantly opened after 2023, when the situation will be more relaxed.
Current state of automotive MCUs: The market is huge but unbalanced
For the overall situation of automotive MCUs in 2021, IC Insights analyzed it in the 2021 edition of the McClean Report. The report pointed out that global automotive MCU sales will soar by 23% in 2021, and 32 positions are expected to account for 77% of them, followed by 18% of 16th and 6% of 8th. Automotive MCUs are a huge market, accounting for about 40% of total MCU sales over the past decade, although supply and demand have been uneven over the past few years.
Despite continued shortages of MCUs in 2021 and automakers having to temporarily shut down assembly lines, the agency expects automotive MCUs sales to soar 23 percent during the economic recovery in 2021 to a record high of $7.6 billion; 14 percent in 2022 and 16 percent in 2023.
In the first half of 2021, there were some setbacks in market supply — such as the large-scale power outage in Texas that led to fab closures during the historic Arctic cold wave in February, and the severe damage to some wafer processing plants in Japan.
In addition to the impact of the epidemic and natural disasters, the imbalance between supply and demand of global MCUs is also closely related to the market competition pattern. From the perspective of the global market competition pattern, renesas electronics, NXP, Microchip, STMicroelectronics, Infineon and other foreign manufacturers occupy a high market share in the mid-to-high-end MCU market.
According to Omdia statistics, there are no Chinese mainland companies in the world's top ten MCU manufacturers in 2019, the main reasons are: (1) the global market share of the United States, Japan and Europe vehicle brands is high, the supply chain is basically solidified, the MCU produced by mature semiconductor manufacturers of overseas first-line manufacturers, Chinese semiconductor companies start late, and it takes a certain amount of time to cut into the existing ecosystem; (2) High-performance MCUs have higher requirements for chip design capabilities and wafer manufacturing processes, and special MCUs require a lot of Know-how experience accumulation. At present, the penetration progress of local manufacturers is relatively slow.
The "hard choice" under the lack of core: looking for localization alternatives in waiting
When talking about how to deal with the crisis of lack of cores, many small and medium-sized automotive electronics manufacturers expressed helplessness. "We can only accept the fact that the price increase and the supply delay are accepted, and no one knows when it will be alleviated during that time." All you can do is wait. ”
Of course, the process of waiting does not mean doing nothing, many companies in the local market to find alternatives, domestic manufacturers of car heat pump systems said, "chip shortage price increases lead to serious damage to gross profit." We are also doing development and replacement work on local chips. Because all the replacements not only need to revise the software, hardware circuits, but also need to re-do the product verification tests required by various automotive electronic products, and then need to be submitted to the main car factory for small batch verification before they dare to switch in large quantities, the entire replacement process is very long. Therefore, for local small and medium-sized manufacturers, in the context of lack of cores, it is undoubtedly a "difficult choice" to find new chip replacements.
In addition to the long replacement process, some manufacturers said that the safety and reliability of the chip on the core components is also a major test. Some manufacturers said, "We have tried to take the MCU of several domestic manufacturers to do experiments, but our product design and functional characteristics are high, in the electronic control part of the PCB circuit alone has a 4-layer structure, and between each layer, the MCU needs to have different work." The MCU manufacturers that can be selected in China are several large manufacturers, and the overseas large manufacturers are compared, after all, they have a short time period for the verification of the car regulations, and some products really cannot be used for a long time in our high-intensity use and harsh environment. ”
An automotive electronics engineer for a new energy vehicle in Shenzhen told Jiwei Network that they had the same experience. "Previously, when we were most short of materials, the electronic control module of the electric air conditioning compressor also tried to find some MCU models from domestic manufacturers to test. However, take it to the running platform experiment, some of them began to report failures not long after running, and even some of them just ran and slacked off, which did not meet our expectations. ”
To achieve import substitution, how should local IC manufacturers break through?
Admittedly, the opportunity to get on the bus for local manufacturers has arrived. In today's turbulent trade atmosphere, the restructuring of the supply chain system caused by the evolution of intelligent electrification in the automotive industry, and the lack of cores that have spread so far in the second half of 2020, have undoubtedly created more opportunities and space for local manufacturers such as Gigabit Innovation, Xinwangwei, Jiefa Technology, and Yuntu Semiconductor to enter the intelligent cockpit.
For the prospect of chip localization substitution, Wang Kai, CEO of Core Engine Technology, told Jiwei Network, "If the local chip design and production capacity cannot go up, in the current shortage of stock, localization substitution can be replaced for a while." However, when the market is not out of stock and the price returns to normal, downstream manufacturers may still use the chips of large factories; so we believe that the iron needs to be hard, do a solid foundation, and consolidate our chip research and development, design and other innovative strength, so that it is possible to truly compete with overseas manufacturers. ”
This global lack of cores has given domestic chip companies the opportunity to get on the car. In order to alleviate the lack of core, local companies must keep this achievement, not to be replaced, to be thrown off, local manufacturers still need to make up for their shortcomings.
How to look at the gap between domestic and foreign MCU manufacturers and make up for shortcomings? Wang Wei, marketing director of Agile Microelectronics, who has many years of work experience in overseas factories, has his own views. He believes that the key for local manufacturers is to lay a good "foundation". Do a good job of products in a down-to-earth manner, polish the technology in a down-to-earth manner, rather than thinking of taking 2 or 3 years to complete the route of overseas factories in 5 years or even longer. These big companies have accumulated semiconductor technology for many years, which can help them overcome difficulties effectively and quickly in MCU development. This is the advantage of foreign manufacturers, and it is also a place where domestic manufacturers can learn from to make up for shortcomings. (Proofreading/New)