1
The current situation and trend of automotive chips
As of March 9, 2022, production of vehicles worldwide due to chip shortages has been reduced by 5.85 million units, and production in the Chinese market has been reduced by 1.122 million units. According to current statistics, this impact caused by the lack of cores is likely to continue until next year.
The problem of chip shortage is mainly concentrated in front-end production capacity, so the impact is limited. However, in recent years, due to the impact of the epidemic, the main pressure of the chip shortage has been increasingly concentrated in the packaging and testing stage, and the capacity limit of packaging and testing will affect all automotive chips, including sensors, power supplies and discrete devices. The bases we know so far are mainly concentrated in China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia. Among them, Malaysia is the most important closed testing base in the world.
On August 17, 2021, Xu Daquan, vice president of Bosch China, released a circle of friends, saying that because of the "lack of core", they were also under great pressure, and even ridiculed that they wanted to jump off the building with the leader.
According to current data, Southeast Asia accounts for 27% of the world's semiconductor packaging and testing industry, while Malaysia accounts for 13% of the world. In 2021, Malaysia exported 569.5 billion yuan of electronic products and related parts, accounting for nearly 40% of the country's foreign trade exports that year, and more than 50 semiconductors such as Intel, Infineon, STMicroelectronics, NXP, Texas Instruments, AND & Co., Ltd. have set up semiconductor manufacturing bases in Malaysia. The reduction of packaging and testing capacity will also lead to repeated impacts on automotive chip companies.
2
What chips are missing in the auto industry?
In the automotive chip, according to the function division can be divided into eight categories: high-performance computing chips (AI chips / GPUs), microcontrollers (MCUs), memory chips (DRAM / Flash), CMOS image sensing chips, display driver chips, analog chips (including wireless communication power amplifiers, audio amplifiers, sensors, etc.), power components, sensing chips (pressure, flow, inertia, humidity, infrared, etc.).
There are so many types of in-vehicle chips. So, in the wave of core shortages that have been boiling over the past two years, what is the core that car companies lack the most?
At present, cars are becoming more and more commonly intelligent, the whole vehicle will be equipped with more functions, and a large number of actuators need to be controlled by MCU. From anti-lock braking system, four-wheel drive system, electronically controlled automatic transmission, active suspension system, to the current gradually extended to the body of various safety, network, entertainment control systems and other fields. Nowadays, a traditional fuel vehicle needs to use dozens to hundreds of MCUs, not to mention the use of new energy vehicles. Such a large amount of MCU chips is the protagonist of the most lack of cores in car companies in the past two years. Moreover, the demand for MCUs in global automobiles is still increasing.
ACCORDING TO IC Insights, the global automotive grade MCU market is expected to grow from $6.5 billion in 2020 to $8.8 billion by 2023. From the perspective of the pattern, the automotive MCU market is concentrated in several leading enterprises. In 2022, the top five global automotive MCUs accounted for the market share of Renesas, NXP, Infineon, Texas Instruments and Microchip, accounting for a total of about 87%.
3
The impact of chip shortage on major car companies
(1) Ford Motor: On January 8, 2021, Ford announced that its plant in Kentucky, USA, was forced to stop production due to a chip shortage, and the company may reduce production by one-fifth in the first quarter, or lead to a $1 billion to $2.5 billion reduction in adjusted pretax profit this year
(2) Toyota Motor Corporation: On January 18, 2021, the company launched a production cut plan to weaken the production of the Civic and Accord in the United States, and the 14 factories in Japan stopped production to varying degrees due to chip shortages in August and September, with a maximum shutdown of up to 11 days. Toyota's global production is expected to decrease by 330,000 units in October, accounting for 40% of the original production plan.
(3) Volkswagen: due to the shortage of chips, it will adjust the production of cars in China, North America, and even Europe, and due to the shortage of chips, the Czech plant in Skoda will stop production for a week at the end of September; The shutdown of SEAT's Spain plant will be extended until 2022.
(4) SAIC Motor Group: In 2020Q3 and Q4, some models of SAIC Volkswagen are facing tight production capacity due to chip shortages. 2021Q1 Some SAIC Volkswagen models were discontinued in stages.
(5) GAC Group: In January 2020, the production of automobiles was 138,000 units, a decrease of 24.31% over the same period last year, the production of passenger cars decreased by 24.35% year-on-year, and the production of passenger cars decreased by 32.16% year-on-year.
4
How car companies deal with the "chip shortage"
Let's take an example of Xiaopeng Motors, which is currently selling hot, and it is expected to achieve the goal of 15,000 units per month by the end of last year. Now due to the shortage of millimeter-wave radar supply, which affects the production and delivery time of Xiaopeng Automobile P5, then whether this goal can be successfully achieved is still unknown, in December 25, CCTV Finance "Dialogue • Challenger" program He Xiaopeng said that the most anxious recently is the supply chain problem, who gives him chips He invites who to drink, Xiaopeng's latest P5 model is the most disturbed by chip shortages, and he often flies to drink and find chips.
At the same time, it is reported that under the current situation of chip shortage, some Xiaopeng P5 owners have received a notice of delivery plan. Xiaopeng Motors said in the notice that due to the shortage of millimeter wave radar supply, it will affect the production and delivery time of the model you purchase. Therefore, if the owner is willing to choose the delivery plan for the replacement radar after picking up the car, Xiaopeng will give away the intelligent auxiliary driving system XPILOT3.0/3.5 software (valued at about 20,000 yuan) for free, and the date of the replacement radar is expected to start from March 31, 2022. If the owner is not willing to accept the above delivery plan, he can also choose to continue to wait for the car to be picked up, delivery in order, of course, can not get the free XPILOT 3.0/3.5 software.
This time, Xiaopeng Automobile has adopted a similar delivery plan to deal with the problem of lack of cores, which may indicate that under the pressure of lack of cores, more and more car companies will adopt this delivery method.
5
Opportunities for domestic automotive chips
The shortage of global automotive chips has forced domestic chips to accelerate self-research and achieve breakthroughs. In the medium and long term, the chip shortage may reverse the trend of independent replacement of domestic automotive chips.
Looking at the financing from 2021 to April 2022, there are three main characteristics: First, the amount of financing is generally large, most of which is related to the long research and development cycle of automotive chips and large capital investment; second, the fast pace of project financing, Horizon, BGI Beidou has completed 4 rounds of financing in 2 years; third, among investment institutions, financial investment in 2021 has increased significantly, and more than 2019-2022 is capital related to the automobile and chip industry chain, such as BYD, Shangyi Capital, Ningde Era, SMIC Juyuan, etc., as shown in the figure:
On the whole, the shortage of automotive chips has hit the global and Chinese auto markets hard, and at present, the major local car companies in the mainland have begun to explore ways to solve the chip supply problem. In the future, whether car companies can solve the problem of automotive chip supply is the key to seizing the market share of automobiles.
6
summary
From the current situation, the current chip crisis is like a chain reaction brought about by the butterfly effect, and the root of the car chip crisis lies in the 8-inch wafer itself, which is 30 years old, or the disconnection of the underlying chip in the era. Today, even if all chip OEMs are replaced by 8-inch wafer production lines to cope with the crisis, it is only a symptom rather than a cure.
In recent years, the rapid development of the car is like an outside-in surgery, the first change is the power system, intelligent cockpit and automatic driving these tall "surface", and finally ECU, ESP, which still uses the old chip technology of the underlying system will eventually be replaced by new technologies, with another new attitude in front of consumers. The whole industry chain follows the progress of the times, which is the best solution to the chip crisis.
Part of the data in the article comes from media reports
Note: If there is any error, please correct it
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