General trend? Ecological construction of automobile chip industry
The continuous shortage of automobile chips has led to high prices, especially in the middleman link. Recently, some market participants revealed that in order to cope with the continuous price rise of raw materials such as copper, gold, oil and silicon wafer, chip companies such as Infineon, NXP, Renesas and Italian French semiconductor are ready to increase the quotation of automobile chips in 2022, with an increase of 10% ~ 20%.
The other end of the sharp rise in chip prices is the continuation of the contradiction between supply and demand. According to the latest data from the global automotive consulting firm autoforecast solutions, as of October 10, the cumulative production reduction in the global automotive market due to lack of core had reached 9.345 million. Among them, China's auto market has reduced production by 1827000 units, and the satisfaction with auto chip orders is even less than 20%.
However, recently, industry experts said that the dark moment of the shortage of automobile chips has passed, and it is expected that domestic automobile production and sales will gradually strengthen in the next few months. Cui Dongshu, Secretary General of the national passenger car market information joint committee, believes that the darkest period of automobile chip supply has passed and will continue to improve in the future. However, to completely eliminate the chip shortage, it is estimated that it will be after the sales peak of the Spring Festival next year. More and more people in the industry believe that solving the short-term contradiction between supply and demand can not solve the pain of lack of core. In the long run, we still need to establish a perfect automotive chip ecosystem from the perspective of supply chain.
The core shortage will be alleviated in the fourth quarter
Since 2020, the continuous shortage of chips has seriously restricted the expansion of global automobile production and marketing scale. Especially in the context of accelerated upgrading of automotive intelligence and electrification, the strong demand for MCU, IGBT and other chips can not be fully met. According to the latest forecast of the global automobile consulting agency, the cumulative production reduction in the global automobile market this year will exceed 10 million, reaching 10.842 million.
However, while the core shortage continues to affect global automobile production and sales, good news has also come from the market recently. First of all, TSMC announced that it would give priority to solving the problem of automobile chip supply and expand MCU chip production capacity. It is expected that the annual production capacity will be expanded by 60%. Recently, Infineon also announced that it would increase production by $2.8 billion next year.
Su Linlin, vice president of Ziguang Guowei, revealed that in the past year, the price rise caused by the shortage of automobile chips has stimulated chip factories' investment in automobile chips. With the adjustment of market mechanism, the production capacity of automobile chips has indeed improved, and the shortage of some subdivision chips has been alleviated. Based on the active expansion of chip enterprises and the mitigation of the epidemic in Malaysia, industry experts judge that the darkest moment of auto chip shortage has passed, and the chip supply will continue to improve in the future.
On October 19, Luo Junjie, spokesman of the Ministry of industry and information technology and director of the operation monitoring Coordination Bureau, mentioned at the press conference of the Information Office of the State Council that so far, the problem of the automotive industry affected by the shortage of chips is still obvious, but according to various signs, it is expected that the fourth quarter will be alleviated in the third quarter. Luo Junjie said that the Ministry of industry and information technology has been paying close attention to and actively responding to the shortage of automotive chips. Next, the Ministry of industry and information technology will continue to strengthen operation monitoring, analysis and judgment, timely coordinate and solve outstanding problems, and support enterprises to find a variety of alternative solutions through the convenient enterprise service measures implemented by the Ministry of industry and information technology. At the same time, guide enterprises to further optimize the supply chain layout, improve the comprehensive supply capacity of automotive chips and improve the stability of the supply chain. In this regard, Shanxi securities analysis pointed out that with the peak of the epidemic in Southeast Asia, Malaysian chip factories gradually restored production capacity, and chip procurement was guaranteed in the fourth quarter.
However, some insiders suggested that although chip enterprises are actively expanding production capacity and increasing supply, attention should also be paid to hoarding and driving up prices in the circulation link. Not long ago, the state market supervision and Administration issued fines to three dealers who bid up the price of auto chips. At the same time, the phenomenon of middlemen hoarding and driving up prices has also attracted the attention of upstream chip enterprises.
Recently, Liu Deyin, chairman of TSMC, said that the company has no hunger marketing and its production capacity is expanding, but there is a phenomenon of hoarding in the supply chain. At present, TSMC has a special team to collect relevant data, clarify which users are really out of stock and which are hoarding, and arrange orders to enterprises in urgent need of chips.
Challenges in supply chain management
Although the chip supply chain system has become a mature industry with global division of labor, the chip supply chain system still faces great challenges under the influence of sudden factors such as epidemic situation.
Jiang Jian, vice president of Bosch China, said that the chip supply chain of the global automotive industry has been completely chaotic. Although the original global division of labor and lean production in the automotive industry have been very mature, under the new situation, there is a crisis in the automotive chip supply chain system, which must attract the attention of the whole industry.
The Secretary General of China Automotive chip industry innovation strategic alliance originally told the securities times that the first problem facing the automotive chip industry chain is the imperfect standard system. According to him, if you want to get on the car, you need a lot of audit and certification in the early stage. Even after getting on the car, you should ensure that there are no relevant quality risks. However, at present, there is no relevant unified standard in China, and there is a lack of standard system, which leads to a decline in the willingness of sector chip enterprises to develop automobile chips.
It is understood that compared with consumer electronics chips, vehicle level chips need to ensure high security, high reliability, high adaptability and high stability, as well as high cost performance, which brings great challenges to chip enterprises. At the same time, due to the lack of standard system and imperfect supply chain system, the threshold for chip enterprises to enter vehicle level chips has become higher.
In view of the above problems, chip companies in the front line of the chip industry feel the most. Su Linlin said that there are thousands of chips. For chip companies, if they focus on automotive chips, their output is difficult to support the sustainable development of the company. In a sense, automotive chip is the stabilizer and auxiliary device to promote the development of chip companies, but it is by no means the core driving force. Therefore, for a long time, chip companies have limited investment in vehicle specification chips.
Even with such limited investment, chip companies will face certain risks and fluctuations. Under the background of imperfect industrial standards and imperfect industrial chain ecology, most chip enterprises will not actively develop new categories and focus on automobile chips, but will carry out some transformation and upgrading on the basis of existing products and gradually adjust the company's product line.
We all know the current situation and challenges of the automotive chip industry and how to solve the problems existing in supply chain management. Xu Jian, chief ecological officer of horizon, believes that in order to reduce the complexity of automotive chip supply chain management, we can do some articles from the perspective of integration. In his opinion, there are many kinds of automotive chips and many suppliers involved. In such a complex system, it is difficult to ensure the stable supply of products. We can refer to the integration of electronic and electrical architecture of intelligent vehicles to optimize and integrate automotive chips, which is conducive to simplifying the automotive chip supply chain.
Constructing the ecology of automobile chip industry
Many people in the industry believe that in order to smooth the automotive chip supply chain and simplify the supply process, we must first establish an ecosystem that can fully integrate the two different industries of automotive chips.
Last September, with the joint support of the Ministry of science and technology and the Ministry of industry and information technology, the China Automotive Chip Industry Innovation Strategic Alliance launched by the national new energy vehicle technology innovation center as a national common technological innovation platform was officially established. The establishment of the alliance is to establish a comprehensive ecological platform integrating automobile enterprises, chip enterprises, universities and scientific research institutions to jointly overcome the problems encountered in the application of automobile grade chips. We hope to do something that cannot be done by a single enterprise and industry, focus on the ecological construction of automobile chips, accelerate the replacement of domestic automobile chips, and establish and develop an independent and controllable international cooperation system. Yuan Chengyin told the securities times.
It has become the consensus of the whole chip industry to realize the self-sufficiency of domestic chips by building an alliance system. It is reported that at the beginning of this year, 90 companies including Huawei Hisilicon, Ziguang Tongxin, Ziguang zhanrui, Longxin Zhongke and SMIC international jointly established the national integrated circuit Standardization Technical Committee to build a chip industry alliance and promote the self-sufficiency of domestic chips.
Li Zhaolin, Professor of computer science and Technology Department of Tsinghua University, said that in addition to establishing an ecological chain to meet the application of automotive chips, it is also necessary to promote the development of domestic automotive chips from the following aspects. First of all, we should determine the planning of automobile chip industry from the national level. Li Zhaolin believes that in the past period of time, China has ignored the development of automobile chips and does not support relevant key projects at the national level. Over the past year, the Ministry of industry and information technology and the Ministry of science and technology have increased their support for the domestic automotive chip industry, but we should also be careful not to rush into mass action. After all, promoting the localization of automotive chips is not achieved overnight. It takes five to seven years to form a relatively complete system.
Secondly, Li Zhaolin said that to promote the development of domestic automobile chips, we also need to establish a real national team and strengthen the alliance between schools and enterprises. In his opinion, with the deepening of automotive intelligent network, automotive chip design also puts forward new requirements. The automotive and chip industries need to work together to seize this rare innovation opportunity. Finally, he hopes that some local governments can increase investment in automobile chip production and packaging testing to meet the production demand of domestic automobile chips.
In this regard, Jiang Jian also believes that from the perspective of Bosch China, he very much hopes that the manufacturing of automobile chips can be more localized. Yang Xudong, deputy director of the electronic information department of the Ministry of industry and information technology, revealed that in the next step, the electronic information department of the Ministry of industry and information technology will continue to work with the equipment department to improve the guidance ability of the automobile chip production line, guide the construction of automobile specification testing and certification ability, strengthen the application and promotion of excellent automobile chip schemes, and establish a perfect working mechanism for batch listing and application of automobile chips.
Meet software and user needs
At present, the shortage of chips is not only related to the epidemic, but also closely related to the overall change of the intelligent automobile industry. Many people in the industry believe that it is precisely because of the deepening of automotive intelligence and electrification that the demand for automotive chips by bicycles has increased sharply, and the demand for intelligent chips such as artificial intelligence has also increased significantly.
Liu Hong, Deputy Secretary General of China Automobile Industry Association, said that at present, the value of single vehicle semiconductor has increased from $300 in 2010 to $475 in 2020 and is expected to reach $600 by 2030. The value of bicycle semiconductor is growing rapidly and has great growth potential. In particular, the bicycle semiconductor of pure electric vehicles is 5 ~ 6 times that of traditional vehicles. From the perspective of industrial development and trend, the development of automotive electrification and intelligent networking will inevitably bring great opportunities to the development of automotive chips.
Xu Jian believes that for the automotive chip industry, in addition to solving the current contradiction between supply and demand, it is also necessary to enhance the adaptability of the chip to software. On the surface, the chip is hardware, but fundamentally, the automobile chip is for software, which is more suitable for the needs of intelligent vehicles. Therefore, he suggested that the development of automotive chips should be more integrated into the software industry, and everyone should maintain openness and mutual trust on one channel to achieve cooperation.
In fact, with the accelerated landing of intelligent networked vehicles, the demand for the computing power of automotive specification chips has increased significantly. According to the top ten technical trends of China's automobile in 2022 released by China Society of automotive engineering, the most significant trend in 2022 is that the automobile specification computing chips above 100tops will be mass produced and loaded soon. Hou Fushen, Deputy Secretary General of China Society of automotive engineering and executive president of International Institute of automotive engineering technology innovation strategy, judged that with the continuous improvement of the networking level of intelligent vehicles, the demand for computing power is increasingly urgent, and the large-scale production of intelligent network vehicles urgently needs computing power resources. It is expected that in 2022, the single chip computing capacity of the autonomous vehicle specification level computing chip will exceed 100tops, and will be installed and applied before the mass production of multiple models, so as to further provide the computing capacity basis for the mass production of advanced autonomous vehicles.
In addition to meeting the demand of software for high computing power, industry insiders also believe that future automotive chips must better meet the needs of end users. Su Linlin said that automobile chips are not only automobile enterprises and intelligent automobile products, but also end consumers. Chip companies need to strengthen communication with automobile companies and jointly develop automobile chip products that better meet the needs of a new generation of consumers.
