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Recently, some media reported that the United States is investigating whether large Chinese car companies are using American technology. Specifically, it includes three aspects: whether to use American technology and software, whether to use American equipment, and whether to use American raw materials. The source was allegedly provided by an international automotive electronics supplier.
It's unclear whether the survey was aimed at all Chinese automakers or at one company. But such an investigation is likely to be a precursor to sanctions.
We are no strangers to the sanctions imposed on the United States, our chips, Huawei, and DJI are all examples, so if the United States announces sanctions against Chinese car companies one day, it is actually not surprising at all.
But the question is, can our car companies withstand US sanctions? Let me talk about it from the three aspects of hardware, software, and raw materials required for automobile manufacturing.
Hardware is advancing rapidly
But the shortcomings are still obvious
Chips are the biggest pain
The progress of Chinese car companies is obvious to all, and the performance in hardware is the most direct. But the shortcomings are still obvious, and the most serious external dependence is the chip.
Last year, the Minister of Industry and Information Technology said that more than 95% of China's automotive chips rely on imports, and such an import ratio is indeed more desperate at first glance, and once sanctioned, there is basically no core available.
However, if you analyze it carefully, the situation is actually not so bad. There are three main types of automotive chips: traditional control chips, autonomous driving chips and smart cockpit chips.
The traditional control chip is the most used, how much oil the engine should spray, when to ignite, are calculated by this chip. This kind of chip is basically not an advanced process, 90 nanometer process is still very common, 28 nanometers is already amazing. And this kind of process, we can completely design ourselves, make our own.
Audi's engine control unit
Commonly known as the brain of the engine
The reason why the external dependence is so high now is because they can buy mature products from international manufacturers, and many car companies are not willing to take risks to change domestic chips. However, as long as it is sanctioned and cannot buy the chips of infineon and NXP, domestic chips will soon occupy the market.
The real stuck neck is the automatic driving chip and the smart cockpit chip, the key to the card neck is not the design, but even if it can be designed, it cannot be produced.
But this does not mean that our smart electric vehicles can not be built, but in the competition of smart cars will be slower. Take ten thousand steps back, even if it is completely unintelligent, the car can still be built.
Turbocharger
External dependence is also more than 90%
Now the first-line independent brands are basically self-developed powertrains, and the parameters are not worse than those of international manufacturers, and the Great Wall has developed 3.0T V6+9AT. However, turbochargers, which have been very popular, rely on foreign brands for more than 90% of the shares, and the degree of dependence on foreign countries is not lost to chips.
According to statistics, in 2020, the four major foreign-funded enterprises will occupy 87% of the domestic turbocharger share, and the proportion of domestic brands is only about 5%.
The data comes from Huajing Industry Research Institute
Although the supercharger is very popular, it is not low in manufacturing, because its working environment is too harsh, the working temperature is about 600-1000 degrees, and the speed per minute is as high as more than 30,000 revolutions. And it must also be able to work for dozens of hours continuously. This has extremely harsh requirements for the strength, high temperature resistance and wear resistance of turbine bearings.
Of course, domestic manufacturers are not unable to build, but face the same embarrassment as chips, that is, few car companies dare to use it, no one dares to use it, there is no profit, and it is difficult to iteratively upgrade.
However, once we are sanctioned and can only purchase domestic brands, I believe that our technical level will soon be significantly improved.
Domestic supercharger produced by Hunan Tianyan
Domestic industrial robots are a bit stupid
At the beginning, it was mentioned that the United States is not only reviewing which American technologies are used by Chinese car companies, but also which American equipment is used. In automobile production, industrial robots are almost the most important equipment. In today's automobile factories, there are almost no busy scenes of workers, but instead rows of industrial robots. Unfortunately, in this area, more than 95% of the market is also monopolized by foreign investors.
There are four major families in the field of industrial robots: Fanuc of Japan, Yaskawa, ABB of Sweden, and KUKA of Germany. Good industrial robots can complete complex and precise actions, and the failure rate is still very low. One of the biggest difficulties is in the algorithm, under the premise of similar hardware, the products of the "four major families" can be more than 10 times more expensive than the domestic ones, but car companies still choose the former products.
An employee of a car company once said, "More than 100 four major families of equipment in the factory can not fail several times a year, if you use domestic robots, the failure rate will be several times that of others."
Although the algorithm of domestic robots is not refined, Midea spent 29.2 billion yuan as early as 2017 to buy 95% of the shares of Germany's KUKA. Later, many people questioned that Midea spent a lot of money but did not get the real core technology, so just last month, Midea spent another 1.05 billion yuan, 100% completely acquired KUKA.
I hope that Midea can also digest and absorb KUKA's core technology as soon as possible like Geely's acquisition of Volvo.
In the hardware of the progress of Chinese car companies is indeed visible to the naked eye, but the short board is still a lot, I just chose a few representative, external dependence on more than 90% of the products to give a few examples, other like ESP system, battery separator (lithium battery core components), dual-clutch transmission control modules are also heavily dependent on imports.
Therefore, although we have made obvious progress, there are still many shortcomings that need to be made up.
Software is still subject to people, and operating systems are all American
Saying that at the level of automotive software, we are subject to people, many people may feel incredible, after all, the car machine of domestic cars is generally much stronger than that of joint venture brands.
Ideal L9 interior
But these good apps are like crops growing in the field, and the land is not ours. Now the smart car is especially like a smart phone, for the mobile phone, the chip and the operating system is our two hard wounds, smart cars are the same, smart cars also need operating systems, and now everyone uses the basic open source Android system, and the Android system is developed by Google in the United States.
It is said that the future is a software-defined car, and the core selling point of the future car will also be the optimization ability of software. Without its own operating system, it is equivalent to handing over the soul and lifeblood of the smart car to others.
Some experts also reminded that the establishment of their own underlying operating system is not only related to data security, but also may involve the distribution of benefits in the future. Fortunately, some companies have begun to try, Huawei's on-board Hongmeng system, in terms of maturity and experience have done a good job, but the loading volume is still very low.
Polar Fox Alpha S equipped with Huawei's Hongmeng car machine system
I hope that in the future, domestic car companies can be more grouped together to support China's own operating system.
Assisted driving is becoming more and more popular, but it is dominated by foreign capital
At present, models in the early 100,000 years are beginning to be equipped with L2-level assisted driving, but the auxiliary driving systems of each car company are not all developed by themselves, but the complete solutions provided by suppliers. In the market for assisted driving solutions, more than 90% are monopolized by joint ventures.
The data comes from the Gaogong Automotive Research Institute
The number one independent supplier in this field is called Jingwei Hengrun, and according to the data of 2020, the market share is only 3.6%.
Assisted driving is hard because it's easy to win-take-all. Because the larger the loading volume of a system, the more data is accumulated, and according to this data, it can be continuously updated and iterated on the algorithm. The more unused, the more inexhaustible it is, the more unable to compete with international manufacturers.
Therefore, although L2-level assisted driving is becoming more and more popular, this is mainly due to the credit of foreign suppliers, and domestic suppliers still have a long way to go.
The raw material is the neck of the real card
When it comes to the place where Chinese cars are stuck in the neck, I think there is actually a real card neck and a fake card neck. Although the important parts mentioned earlier are monopolized by foreign investors in more than 90% of the market, I think they cannot be regarded as real card necks. Because the reason why we choose foreign-funded products is not that we can't make them, but that foreign capital is more mature and more reliable, and the risk of choosing domestic products is relatively high.
But when it is really sanctioned, domestic parts can still be on top, and it is likely that because of the support of car companies, technology and maturity will be rapidly improved. The good is the curse, the blessing is the blessing, and the blessing is the curse.
So what is the neck of the real card? That is, if once sanctioned and cut off supply, Chinese car companies will have to stop production, and cars will not be built. Is there such a thing, is there really such a thing, that is, the raw material that the United States said in the investigation. For example, lithium, cobalt and so on required for lithium batteries.
In order to get rid of the dependence on oil, we began to transform into electric vehicles, but the current lithium batteries need lithium, our external dependence on the situation may be more serious, there are data show that China's lithium resource reserves account for only 5.88% of the world, currently about 70% dependent on imports.
The data comes from the China Commercial Industry Research Institute
Since the beginning of this year, the collective price of electric vehicles has risen, and an important reason is because the price of lithium carbonate has risen nearly 10 times.
In addition, only about 3.3 million new energy vehicles were sold last year, accounting for less than 16% of the total sales of passenger cars. If half of the cars in the future are electric vehicles, then the sales of electric vehicles will reach more than 10 million, which is 3 times that of the present. How much will the price of lithium rise at that time?
Therefore, if the chip and operating system mentioned earlier are still fake card necks, then lithium ore is the real card neck.
The situation of cobalt is more serious than lithium, China accounts for only 1% of global cobalt production, but it is the world's largest cobalt consumer.
Does this mean that the shortage of resources is completely unsolvable? In fact, it is not, lithium and cobalt we do lack, but can develop cobalt-free batteries, Ningde times are also actively developing sodium-ion batteries. And we can also recycle lithium in waste batteries, and some experts say that waste batteries themselves are also a huge lithium mine.
Even, new energy does not necessarily mean pure electric, and the country is now actively laying out hydrogen energy.
Great Wall's hydrogen fuel cell engine
Write at the end
Whether or not the news that the United States may sanction Chinese car companies is true or not, we must be prepared for this. Only the more prepared it is, the less the United States will launch sanctions. Because when we can achieve domestic substitution, sanctions will only make multinational companies completely lose the Chinese market, but create huge opportunities for domestic enterprises.
Of course, there are actually many places where we rely on the outside world, far more than what we talked about, so domestic car companies must abandon the idea of building is better than buying, buying is not as good as renting, and really holding the core technology in their own hands, which is the biggest confidence to deal with all sanctions and market competition.