According to functions, automotive chips can be roughly divided into three categories: The first category is responsible for computing power and processing, such as AI chips for autonomous driving perception and fusion, and traditional MCUs (electronic control units) for engine/chassis/body control. ; The second category is responsible for power conversion, such as IGBT (insulated gate bipolar transistor) and other power devices; the third category is sensing chips, used for various radars in autonomous driving, as well as airbags, tire pressure detection, etc.
According to estimates, each car is equipped with about 1,600 semiconductors on average. These semiconductor devices are distributed in various equipment and systems of the car. It is the automotive chips that dominate their collaborative work, such as logic computing chips, memory chips, microcontroller MCUs, etc.
From an application perspective, everything from the tire pressure monitoring system TMPS and cameras to the vehicle controller and autonomous driving domain controller are inseparable from various chips in the car. It can be said that the intelligence of cars is the intelligence of chips.
The number of chips in traditional cars is about 500 to 600. With the increase in functions such as autonomous driving and new energy, the number of chips is now about 1,000 to 1,200. Some models that focus on intelligence require more chips.
What exactly is the lack of core and tide?
Zhu Yulong, a senior electric vehicle three-electric system and automotive electronics engineer, told reporters that in fact, the core shortage wave can be divided into three stages.
The first stage occurred in December 2020, when Volkswagen Group, Continental Tire and Bosch began to announce for the first time the shortage of cores in the automotive industry from the perspective of supply chain shortages. The main argument at that time was that due to the impact of the epidemic, the imbalance caused by the mismatch of supply and demand, the automotive chips required for automobile production, especially the core components engine ECU (electronic control unit) and ESP (electronic stability system) were in short supply. , causing global automobile and parts production to be directly affected.
The second stage is the shortage of MCU (micro control unit) chips, which is reflected in the research reports of various companies in February.
In all aspects of automotive electronics, a large number of MCU microcontrollers are used. Due to the demand for IC (microelectronic devices) miniaturization and high frequency, MCU requires a process below 40nm. Most IDMs (data multiplexing equipment) outsource chip production to foundries such as TSMC (TSMC). TMSC production shipments Accounting for approximately 70% of the market share of all automotive MCUs. Since the market for automotive MCU chips is also highly concentrated, the top 7 MCU suppliers account for approximately 98% of demand.
The bottleneck at that time was TSMC. Since the automotive business only accounted for 3% of its total revenue, this bottleneck would not be resolved for a while. With the mediation of various governments and car companies, TSMC's bottleneck has gradually been broken.
At this stage, car companies have even begun preparations and switching across MCU platforms. This is not only a business process of moving from one supplier to another, but also requires adjusting technical parts such as software and hardware at the same time. It is very difficult, even if In this way, car companies have overcome difficulties and accomplished the task.
What we are currently experiencing is the third stage. Due to the intensification of the epidemic in Southeast Asia, a factory of an automotive chip supplier centered in Malaysia was once again required by the local government to close some production lines until August 21, after shutting down the factory and suspending production for several weeks. This directly led to the deterioration of chip supply, and there was also a lack of core chips expanded from the original MCU.
The chip manufacturer's suspension of production has caused difficulties in the supply of Bosch's ESP (electronic stability system)/IPB (parking brake), VCU (vehicle control unit), TCU (transmission control unit) and other products. As the world's largest The supply gap of chassis and safety components for auto parts suppliers has dealt a major blow to all vehicle companies around the world.
What is the voice of automotive customers in purchasing?
Li Shaohua, deputy secretary-general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, pointed out that the current chip scale of the global semiconductor industry is between US$300 billion and US$400 billion, of which automotive chips are about US$40 billion, accounting for less than 10%. Obviously, This will cause car companies to be in a weak situation when scheduling production or competing for orders.
From the perspective of technical requirements, car-grade chips are really prohibitive for most chip companies. Consumer electronics chip technology iterates very quickly, and automotive-grade chips are almost all technologies from more than ten years ago. Although the technology is "outdated", the threshold has not been lowered. On the contrary, automotive-grade chips have such high requirements for performance indicators, service life, reliability, safety, and quality consistency that consumer electronics chips are difficult to match.
The high standards, strict requirements, and long lead times of automotive-grade chips have repeatedly raised the threshold for entry into the industry. This has also directly led to the fact that only chip companies with very strong comprehensive capabilities or vertical integration capabilities and the ability to maximize their scale advantages can enter the automotive industry. Standard-grade chips are included in the production list. Looking around the world, there are only a few such car-grade chip companies such as NXP, Infineon, and Siemens. There are too many and too few. This is another reason why the supply of automotive chips exceeds demand.
Can't the chip be replaced?
Chip production capacity continues to decrease, but prices continue to increase. Previously, Tesla CEO Musk complained on social media: "Robbing for chips is like grabbing toilet paper."
Why can’t we take the opportunity to replace domestic chips? Some experts say that this may not be possible in the short term.
Because compared to consumer chips and general industrial chips, the working environment of automotive chips is harsher: the temperature range can be as wide as -40℃~155℃, high vibration, dust, electromagnetic interference, etc. Due to personal safety issues, automotive chips also have higher requirements for reliability and safety. The general design life is 15 years or 200,000 kilometers. "Car-grade" chips need to go through a rigorous certification process, including reliability standard AEC-Q100, quality management standard ISO/TS 16949, functional safety standard ISO26262, etc.
From a production capacity perspective, it often takes two years to build a factory and introduce equipment. It will take another 2 to 3 years to complete vehicle certification and enter the OEM supply chain. Judging from the actual effect, it will not alleviate the current chip shortage crisis. Therefore, it is difficult to quickly increase the supply of automotive-grade chips through new production capacity, and it is mainly through the allocation of supply and demand of existing production capacity.
However, facing the future, our country is working hard to establish a complete innovation ecosystem for the automotive chip industry to solve the shortcomings in the subsequent development of our automotive industry. Among domestic car companies, BYD, SAIC and many semiconductor companies have successively entered the automotive-grade chip field.
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