The shortage of automobile chips is inevitable, and it can't push it to overtake domestic automobile gauge semiconductor enterprises in corners.

"North-South Volkswagen" exposed the shutdown event, which made the shortage of automobile chips "top".

Recently, some media reported that due to the shortage of chips, North and South Volkswagen began to stop production. Among them, FAW-Volkswagen stopped production from the beginning of February 65438, and SAIC-Volkswagen stopped production from June 4, 65438.

Although "North-South Volkswagen" has responded that the problem is under control and that the impact is limited, the problem of insufficient chip supply is undoubtedly imminent, and it is time to attract enough attention from the industry.

Bai Yiyang, an international researcher at China Merchants Bank, said that the classification of semiconductors should be distinguished first. Generally speaking, the vehicle regulation stage can be divided into MCU, power semiconductor and sensor. This time, the shortcomings of the public are still in MCU, which is similar to mobile phones. China has not yet achieved self-control, and it will need continuous investment of capital and talents for a long time to come. The future is mainly in the "short board" stage. In the field of power semiconductors, especially IGBT and silicon carbide? The whole competition pattern in MOSFET and other fields is still relatively good. For example, BYD Semiconductor has a long-term technical accumulation in the field of power semiconductors. In Starr's semiconductor and CRRC era, industrial technology and experience were used to March to the vehicle specification level. At this point, China has the opportunity to realize import substitution in a short time. In the future, under the background of the new four modernizations, automobiles will use more automotive-grade semiconductors, such as self-driving SoC chips, COMS, MEMS, on-board storage and other unicorns in China, such as Horizon, which are in the forefront in some sub-industries. The new four modernizations not only provide opportunities for China automobile industry to overtake in corners, but also provide development space for the last chip enterprise.

The chip problem actually involves the whole industry.

Last Friday, Continental said that although semiconductor manufacturers have expanded their production capacity to meet the huge demand, the current expanded production capacity can only support the next six to nine months, so the potential chip shortage bottleneck may last until 202 1 year.

Volkswagen Group also said that the COVID-19 epidemic has interrupted the supply of chips for some electronic components in the world, and there may be a potential risk of interruption in China's automobile production. With the full recovery of automobile demand in China market, this risk will become more severe.

As the world's largest supplier of auto parts, Bosch Group also has some bottlenecks in the supply chain of parts, and no supplier can be immune to it. However, despite the tense situation, Bosch Group still keeps close contact with suppliers and customers to maintain the operation of the supply chain.

Chip maker Infineon is increasing its investment to expand the production capacity of its new factory in Austria; NXP said that due to the sharp rise in the cost of raw materials and the serious shortage of chips, the price of products had to be raised.

Zhang Zhiliang, an observer of the automobile industry, said that the shortage of chips will affect the automobile production in China for a period of time, and both domestic and foreign automobile brands will be affected, but to different degrees.

According to the data of the Federation, as of June165438+1October, the automobile sales in China exceeded 22 million, only 3% lower than the same period last year. The surge in demand in the second half of the year after the epidemic stabilized also made the shortage of spare parts more prominent.

As FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC-Volkswagen, which have been fighting for the title of sales champion in China automobile market all the year round, it is reasonable that the problem lies with them first.

In 20 19, FAW-Volkswagen achieved an automobile output of 2.03 million vehicles, with a sales volume of 2129,900 vehicles. This year, FAW-Volkswagen sold 1- 10 vehicles.

In 20 19, SAIC Volkswagen sold17.23 million vehicles. This year, SAIC Volkswagen 10 sold1-1.34 million vehicles.

"North and South Volkswagen" respectively said that the first reason is that the inventory of new cars is relatively sufficient. In addition, Volkswagen China has been coordinating suppliers to uniformly allocate chips, so the problem of chip supply can be controlled without affecting delivery.

As an enterprise that is most closely related to the "new four modernizations" of automobiles, it is a new force to build cars. It will also face chip problems.

Weilai Automobile said, "There is no impact for the time being, and Weilai has made preparations in advance."

Another source said that the self-research of Weilai chip has been put on the agenda. Bai Jian, former general manager of Xiaomi Chip and prospective research department, recently joined Weilai as vice president of intelligent hardware. It is reported that Bai Jian has begun to conduct research inside the car owners and ask the car owners what functions they want Weilai's chips to support.

Saipeng Automobile and Li Company, which have been listed on the US stock market, have made it clear that their respective enterprises have not been affected and their production and operation are all normal.

According to an industry insider, this year's chip shortage is a global industry problem, because of the epidemic, the scheduling of chip suppliers has been affected to some extent. The automobile industry is only a small part, and more is the demand for personal consumption and electronic products. Chip manufacturers are inclined when arranging production. Because of the recovery of the automobile industry, at first they thought that the demand would not rise so fast, but the epidemic would bring great improvement to personal consumer goods and electronic products. As a result, by the end of the year, chip manufacturers had insufficient foresight before arranging production, which led to the shortage of chips at the end of the year, which coincided with the Christmas holiday in the west and repeated epidemics.

Automotive grade semiconductors cannot rely solely on foreign countries.

China is the largest single automobile consumption market in the world, but China's automobile industry is not as strong as automobile sales, because many core technologies and important parts are still in the hands of foreign manufacturers. Take the car chip as an example. As of 20 19, the proportion of China's autonomous automobile chips is less than 10%, and it is impossible to achieve safety and autonomous control. In addition, the core technology is only in the hands of a few manufacturers, such as NXP, Texas Instruments, Infineon, Renesas and stmicroelectronics, which account for half of the global automotive chip market. In today's special situation, if the supply is suddenly interrupted,

Li Xiaoguang, an observer of the automobile industry, said that automobile enterprises should think about whether to master their own destiny, that is, the core technology. The answer is definitely "yes", but the degree of "yes" is debatable, because it is obviously unreasonable and impossible for an automobile enterprise to master all the core technologies in the upstream and downstream of the whole industrial chain, which is also against the trend of globalization, but it is obviously fatal to rely entirely on foreign imports. Only one or several state-owned enterprises can solve the problems of R&D and the production of automobile chips, thus realizing the benign development of the industry. From the experience of Zhongxing and Huawei, the industry is more clearly aware that mastering more core technologies will enable it to master more discourse power.

In September this year, with the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, more than 70 enterprises and institutions led by the National New Energy Vehicle Technology Innovation Center (National Innovation Center) set up the "China Automobile Chip Industry Innovation Strategic Alliance", which also gave the independent automobile chip field a unified action organization and reflected the country's attention to automobile chips. It can be predicted that chip autonomy will become a top priority for vehicle manufacturers.

In May this year, BAIC announced the signing of an agreement with Imagination Group and Cuiwei Co., Ltd. to jointly establish Beijing Hexinda Technology Co., Ltd.

It is understood that the joint venture company will focus on the research and development of autonomous driving chips and language interaction chips. If the research and development is successful, the future products will be introduced into the cars of BAIC and other domestic automobile companies.

In addition, in the research and development of semiconductor power devices, as early as 20 18, SAIC and Infineon established an automotive IGBT joint venture company-SAIC Infineon Automotive Power Semiconductor (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., focusing on the research and development of IGBT.

In this respect, the most outstanding achievement is BYD, which not only designed its own domestic IGBT, but also independently developed the first domestic production line. Although there is still a gap between products and giants like Infineon, its strength cannot be underestimated. BYD ranks among the leading domestic new energy vehicles with IGBT and battery, so its share price keeps rising.

Bai Yiyang said that if the process of automobile intelligence is accelerated from the policy level, especially if some automobile-grade semiconductor enterprises are actively supported, I believe that China Semiconductor is expected to overtake cars in some sub-sectors.

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.