“Core shortage” crisis in automobile industry
With the advancement of intelligence, the content of semiconductors in cars is increasing, and the dependence on chips is gradually increasing.
According to the data of China Automobile Industry Association, in 2012, the number of car chips used by traditional fuel vehicles in China was 438 per vehicle, and 567 for new energy vehicles; In 2017, the data of the two increased to 580 and 713 respectively.
The association predicts that in 2022, the number of chips for each traditional fuel vehicle will reach 934, and the average number of chips for new energy vehicles will reach 1459. In the future, the demand for chips for more advanced intelligent vehicles is expected to increase to 3000 per vehicle.
With the increasing demand for automotive chips, automotive chips have fallen into the ups and downs of the market.
After the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, the automotive industry suffered an unprecedented crisis of lack of core, and the global automotive industry was seriously impacted:
GM Korea cancelled overtime arrangement of Incheon Fuping Project to reduce production capacity;
A factory of Ford Motor in Kentucky, USA, fell into a state of total shutdown;
Leiat Chrysler temporarily closed its factory in Ontario, Canada and a small SUV factory in Mexico;
Toyota said the shortage affected the production of its Texas factory in the United States, and the production of Tantu series is expected to be cut by 40%
This situation began in the second half of 2020. The recovery of the industry was much better than expected, even catching up with the pre epidemic level. The supply and demand sides misjudged the situation, and the capacity weakened in the early stage was not kept up in time. As a result, the inventory of automobile chips in all aspects of the supply chain was far below the normal level, and the chip supply fell short of demand.
In addition, the demand for personal computers and cloud computing/storage has been greatly promoted by the home office and learning during the epidemic. The major electronic manufacturers have bought chips crazily and their orders have been seized, squeezing out the share of car chips.
The superposition of the above factors makes the automobile industry fall into the crisis of “core shortage”.
Is the chip industry entering a downward cycle?
Two years later, this year’s chip situation suddenly went to another extreme.
According to the research of Susquehanna Financial Group, a market analysis agency, the average global chip delivery cycle in October was 25.5 weeks, which was shortened by 6 days, the largest drop since 2016, further indicating that the demand for electronic components is rapidly declining.
Analyst Christopher Rolland said that the supply speed of all major product areas is faster than before, and 70% of the companies surveyed by Susquehanna said they can supply chips faster.
The latest report of Asia Pacific Automotive Semiconductors released by Morgan Stanley shows that there has been an oversupply of automotive chips, and points out that both Renesa and Anson have issued orders cutting down on chip test orders in the fourth quarter.
Morgan Stanley analyzed that there are two main reasons for automobile chips to change from one extreme to the other:
First, TSMC’s output of vehicle semiconductor wafers in the third quarter increased by 82% annually, 140% higher than that before the epidemic;
Second, the sales volume of electric vehicles in China has weakened (accounting for 50% to 60% of the global electric vehicles), which has led to the full supply of automotive semiconductors, thus leading to the cutting of orders by major automotive chip manufacturers.
In the current downturn of the consumption environment, the automobile chip industry once became the “lifeline” for many chip manufacturers. But now, whether the auto chip industry has entered a downward cycle from a hard to find one to an oversupply?
In fact, the current lack of cores still has a great impact on the automobile output. However, compared with the previous years, this year’s car specification level chips are in structural shortage, among which the supply of power semiconductors and MCU (micro control unit) is still relatively tight.
In the third quarter of this year, the MCU products of international mainstream chip suppliers continued to be in short supply, with a maximum delivery time of 52 weeks, and generally showed a trend of price increase.
At the beginning of October, Rom Semiconductor, a leading power semiconductor IDM manufacturer in Japan, officially raised the quotation of new and old products by about 10%, and the quotation increase of some product lines was different; At the same time, STC, TI and Infineon also planned to increase the prices of industrial and automotive components by as much as 20% in the fourth quarter.
Alternative Opportunities for Domestic Chips
Correspondingly, the electrification and intellectualization of automobiles are gradually boosting the demand for chips.
The research paper of Tianfeng Securities pointed out that the autonomy rate of China’s car size chips in auto computing and control chips is less than 1%, that of sensors is 4%, that of power semiconductors is 8%, that of memory is 8%, and that of car size MCU localization rate is about 5%. Such supply capacity does not match the huge production, marketing and export market.
The breakthrough to solve this problem is to find a replacement for domestic chips.
However, the short-term breakthrough point of domestic car specification chips must be power chips, because these are standard products, easy to control and easy to start production.
At present, some domestic manufacturers have developed LED driver chips, motor driver chips, etc.
In the aspect of power devices, IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor) modules from domestic manufacturers such as CRRC Times Semiconductor and Stargate Semiconductors are shipped in large quantities;
In the field of isolation chips, the car gauge isolation chips of nano chip micro also performed well and made some breakthroughs. Domestic Yachuang Electronics has introduced domestic and overseas customers in LED driver chips, motor driver chips, etc.
However, some chip manufacturers are still not enthusiastic about putting into production.
Compared with the supplier system of consumer electronics, the requirements for vehicle specification level chips are too strict. Therefore, in the short term, it is very difficult for semiconductor companies that have previously focused on consumer chips to directly obtain vehicle specification qualification certification, and they have not established a mutual trust system with vehicle manufacturers.
Moreover, at present, the demand for vehicle specification level capacity is far less than that of consumption level, and the investment is too large. The certification cycle is very long, and the input energy and output are not completely matched, so the power is obviously insufficient.
Therefore, the gap problem of automobile chips will still exist for a period of time and become an important factor disturbing the automobile industry.
Post time: Dec-07-2022