Recently, the airbag control unit (ACU) equipped with a domestic airbag ignition chip has completed the vehicle assembly and sent to 4S stores. It is worth noting that the core chips used in this module are Guoxin Technology (stock code: 688262. SH) self-developed airbag ignition chip CCL1600B and main control MCU chip CCFC201xBC series.
The airbag ACU scheme of the CCFC201xBC series adopts the special chip CCL1600B for airbag ignition and the main control MCU chip;
So far, the key chip product of China's automobile industry in the field of passive safety - special chip for airbag ignition has entered a new era of loading and application, breaking the long-term monopoly of international manufacturers in this field.
打破垄断，国产替代春风破土
Airbags, as the core of the vehicle's Occupant Assistance System (SRS), are the last line of defense for the driver and passengers in the event of a collision, and its safety and reliability are self-evident.
According to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Public Security, by the end of 2023, the number of motor vehicles in mainland China has reached 435 million, of which 336 million are cars and 20.41 million are new energy vehicles. Behind these figures, however, there is a alarming phenomenon: the number of fatalities per 10,000 motor vehicles in mainland road traffic accidents is as high as 1.38. In this context, safety is still the unavoidable primary proposition in the development of the mainland automobile industry. More and more new energy high-end models use the number of airbags as a selling point, such as the Xiaomi SU7 equipped with 7 airbags, the M9 equipped with 9 airbags, and even some higher-end cars equipped with as many as 24 airbags.
Image source: Guoxin Technology
According to this trend, the Toubao Research Institute predicts that the market size of automotive airbags in mainland China will increase from 33.4-66.8 billion yuan in 2022 to 39.25-78.5 billion yuan in 2025. The global market will also grow from US$15.01 billion (approximately RMB108.58 billion) in 2022 to US$23.26 billion (approximately RMB168.26 billion) in 2030, at a CAGR of 5.9% during the forecast period.
In the automotive airbag market, the key technology that determines the timing of the airbag trigger - special ignition chip, due to technical difficulty, high reliability requirements, expensive development costs and other reasons, domestic chip companies are rarely involved, objectively forming a late start in the research and development of domestic manufacturers, technology hollowing, the market has been monopolized by a few overseas chip giants for a long time, and airbags have become an important part of China's automotive electronic chip neck. Reflected in the market, Bosch, Continental, STF, and Almers and other companies share the main market share, and Bosch alone occupies 40%. Scaling up to the entire ACU module market, it is also highly monopolized by foreign companies such as Continental, Autoliv, ZF, Hella, and Bosch.
Therefore, in June 2023, Guoxin Technology announced that the self-developed airbag ignition drive special chip CCL1600B was successfully tested in Suzhou, marking that Continental has achieved a "zero" breakthrough in this technical field, attracting widespread attention and affirmation inside and outside the industry. In December of the same year, Guoxin Technology reached a strategic cooperation with Zhejiang Aichuang Technology to accelerate the large-scale application of localized chips for airbag controllers.
As the first generation of airbag ignition drive chip developed based on the high-voltage BCD mixed-signal platform of Guoxin Technology, CCL1600B takes into account the dual needs of vehicle manufacturers for high safety and low cost, integrates power supply module, trigger loop module, sensor interface module and complex functional safety design on one chip, minimizes the system BOM cost, improves the monitoring and processing capacity of abnormal working conditions, and provides customers with more cost-effective solutions.
CCL1600B combined with the self-developed main control chip CCFC201xBC series, Guoxin Technology has successfully built a set of "MCU+ASIC" highly compact dual-chip airbag ACU solution, which strongly supported the actual vehicle landing of the first airbag ACU product of Etron Technology, and left a strong mark in the long history of breaking the monopoly of foreign giants on automotive chips in the mainland.
More than ten years of deep cultivation, with the craftsman "core" to create excellence
In recent years, with the rapid expansion of the new energy vehicle market, independent car brands have jumped to 60% of the market share, and China has risen to become the world's largest car exporter. Behind this magnificent picture is the advantage of China gradually establishing a complete industrial chain system from infrastructure, key materials, core components to vehicles and even brands.
The electrification and intelligent transformation of automobiles have provided valuable development opportunities for the domestic automotive chip industry. Although the prospects are broad, we still need to face many barriers on the rugged journey of high-end chip localization. Fortunately, a group of local chip companies committed to innovation have gone through the baptism of wind and rain, overcome technical difficulties step by step, and gradually began to emerge, Guoxin Technology is one of the important representative enterprises, and its progress in the field of domestic automotive electronic chips has made people see the hope of the local industry.
After more than ten years of spring and autumn, Guoxin Technology has been deeply cultivated in the field of automotive electronics, and has laid out 12 major product lines covering body and gateway control, airbags, powertrain, domain control, new energy power battery management, Internet of Vehicles safety, digital-analog mixed signal, DSP for active noise reduction, chassis-by-wire, instrumentation, assisted driving and intelligent sensing, and has now achieved fruitful results.
In order to further strengthen the professional "moat" and form a differentiated core competitiveness, the company has greatly increased its R&D investment in the past two years, with R&D expenses reaching 152 million yuan and 178 million yuan in 2022 and the first three quarters of 2023, with a year-on-year increase of 70.11% and 99.24% respectively, mainly used for the intensive research and polishing of automotive electronic chips, aiming to lead the future of the industry with scientific and technological innovation.
Years of R&D accumulation have enabled Guoxin Technology to have solid technical reserves, and has successfully entered a number of Tier1 suppliers and vehicle supply chains, and has close cooperative relations with more than ten automobile OEMs such as BYD, Chery, SAIC, Changan, Geely, GAC, Dongfeng, and Xiaopeng.
Focusing on the field of airbag chips, CCL1600B is not the first attempt of Guoxin Technology in the field of automotive airbag control. As early as the first half of 2022, its self-designed 32-bit automotive MCU based on the PowerPC instruction set CCFC2012BC came out, which has been fully localized in terms of core IP, design, packaging and testing, and has been widely used in key scenarios of automotive electronics such as body control, vehicle control, gateway system and airbag control system.
With excellent reliability and safety, CCFC2012BC has successfully enabled the safe launch of 2 million airbags as the main control chip, laying a solid foundation for the independent research and development of Guoxin Technology's automotive chips.
Tracing the 20-year entrepreneurial history of Guoxin Technology, from breaking the ice of "high-performance embedded CPU with independent intellectual property rights", to bravely entering the blue ocean of automotive chips, and now successfully developing the first domestic airbag ignition chip, every leap is the crystallization of team wisdom and sweat.
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Video source: Guoxin Technology
Guoxin Technology, a high-tech enterprise born in the hot land of Suzhou, constantly pursues the perfect combination of performance and technology with its excellent innovation soul. This insistence on excellence coincides with the craftsman spirit inherited from generation to generation by the inheritors of Suzhou embroidery, and also reflects Guoxin Technology's unswerving commitment to technological innovation and quality improvement.
Closing remarks
In the process of the transformation and evolution of the "New Four Modernizations" of automobiles, the century-old automotive industry is undergoing the largest restructuring of the industrial chain and value chain in history, and a new qualifying competition has officially kicked off. As Guoxin Technology emphasized, "for the research and development of domestic chips, we have been working hard to move forward", and only by mastering the core technology through independent innovation can we climb the peak of the industry, and then lead to become a strong engine driving the giant wheel of the times.
China is already the world's largest automotive market, and we believe that with the "departure" of local core enterprises represented by Guoxin Technology, while breaking the monopoly of foreign capital and filling the gap in the domestic industry, it will further empower the digital transformation and development of car companies.