Midea mass production of automotive chips in 2024, how is the progress of home appliance companies " core making?

When the global automotive industry is "missing cores", the market has heard the news that Midea Group will mass-produce automotive chips.

On March 15, Midea Group told investors on the interactive platform:

In 2024, the mass production of automotive chips can be realized, and it will be applied to the control of new energy vehicle pumps first.

Image source: Interactive Easy

In 2018, Midea established Shanghai Meiren Semiconductor Company to develop chips in the fields of home appliances, industry, automotive regulations, and medical treatment with technical standards of safety, reliability, adaptability, and cost-effectiveness. From 2020 to 2021, the MCU chip will be mainly put into production, and mass production will begin in 2021, with an annual mass production scale of about 10 million units.

From IPM to MCU, how does Midea reduce the pain of missing cores?

Midea Group is one of the home appliance giants, why cross-border core manufacturing? According to the Midea Group, the chip is the heart, brain and center of many electronic devices, but such an important chip has been monopolized by foreign markets for a long time, and midea core is made to reduce the pain of missing cores.

Cross-border core manufacturing has two major difficulties in technology and cost, and the choice of Midea starts from the IPM module to make cores. IPM module is the core component to achieve the frequency conversion function of home appliances, used to detect current and other faults, when the IPM module relied on imports, in 2010 the United States established an IPM project team, in 2014 set up a Chongqing IPM factory for industrialization, in 2018 the establishment of IPM technology laboratory, IPM business from air conditioning to refrigerators, washing machines and other fields, in 2019 Midea announced the realization of IPM module independent controllability.

After the IPM module, Midea set its sights on the MCU field. The MCU chip used in home appliances such as rice cookers and microwave ovens can be said to be the "brain" of home appliances, commanding and coordinating various operations, and its importance is self-evident. Midea established Shanghai Meiren Semiconductor Company in 2018, through which Midea cut into chip development in the fields of home appliances, industry, automotive regulations, and medical treatment, and mainly put into production of MCU chips from 2020 to 2021, and began mass production in 2021.

Subsequently, Midea established Meiken Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. in 2021, which is mainly engaged in integrated circuit chip and product manufacturing and product sales.

Midea said that on the basis of realizing the independent controllability of IPM modules and the mass production of 10 million MCU chips throughout the year, Shanghai Meiren Semiconductor Company will also cover more application areas in the future, including power chips, power chips, IoT chips, driver chips, automotive chips, etc.

Image source: Midea Group

Among them, in 2024, Midea can realize the mass production of automotive chips, and first apply it to the control of new energy vehicle pumps.

Home appliance companies have made cores, what is the latest progress?

In recent years, the search for independent control of chips has become a common demand of home appliance companies. To this end, including Gree, Konka, Hisense and other home appliance companies have come down to cross-border core manufacturing, and also achieved eye-catching results.

Gree

In 2018, Dong Mingzhu announced in a high-profile manner that Gree will enter the chip field, and before that, Gree has set up a microelectronics department to prepare for the chip business. In 2018, Gree invested 1 billion yuan to establish a wholly-owned subsidiary, Zhuhai Zero Boundary Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd., which focuses on the design of MCU chips, AIoT SoCs and power device chips for home appliances such as air conditioners, and plans to sell more than 100 million units by the end of 2022.

In January 2022, Gree said that the microcontroller chips and power device chips with large amounts have been independently developed and put into use in large quantities, and some chips have been developed to the second generation. The em32 series of general-purpose industrial control 32-bit MCUs developed by subsidiary Zhuhai Zero Boundary has an annual output of tens of millions of units, mainly used in Gree's full range of air-conditioning products.

Konka Group

Konka determined a new strategy for development in 2018 and vigorously laid out its semiconductor business. In the same year, Konka successively established the Semiconductor Technology Division and the Conchini subsidiary, and it is reported that Conchini's main business includes SSD and eMMC memory chips.

On March 15 this year, Konka said that the monthly production capacity of the Yancheng memory chip packaging and testing factory is 3.5K, and the company is actively improving the yield and production efficiency, and will gradually increase the production capacity target according to the business situation.

Hisense

Hisense chip layout mainly around the image quality, Hisense in 2005 invested 500 million yuan to establish Qingdao Hisense Core Technology Co., Ltd., in the same year developed the mainland's first digital video processing chip with independent intellectual property rights, in 2017 Hisense acquired Japan's Toshiba TV, integrated its picture quality chip design team.

Since its development, Hisense image quality processing chip has been updated to the fourth generation, and the first 8k+120hz ultra-high-definition picture quality chip in China has been returned to the film in 2021 and taken the lead in applying it to the whole machine product. In January 2022, Hisense officially released China's first fully self-developed 8K AI picture quality chip.

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