(Economic Observation) Will the auto industry's "core shortage" be alleviated in the third quarter?
China News Service, Beijing, June 27 (Reporter Liu Yuying) The shortage of chips has hit the global automotive industry hard.
Recently, however, some automakers and research institutes believe that the shortage of chips in the auto industry will be alleviated in the second half of this year.
UBS issued a view this week that the worst period may have passed in terms of the negative impact of the global chip shortage on the automotive industry.
An analyst of the company said that General Motors, Ford and Volkswagen all said that as chip supply gradually improves, production prospects are improving.
Volkswagen said that the company expects that the semiconductor supply shortage will be alleviated in the third quarter, but the bottleneck problem will exist for a long time.
Ye Shengji, chief engineer and deputy secretary-general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, also said recently that the shortage of automotive chips will reach its peak in the second quarter. It is expected that the supply of automotive chips will begin to ease in the second half of the year, and the impact is expected to be smoothed out throughout the year by mid-2022. Chip supply is expected to return to normal.
In fact, the main reason for the global automotive chip shortage this year is production capacity.
Regarding the reason for insufficient production capacity, Yang Fan, president of Zhongcheng Think Tank, told a reporter from China News Agency that compared with other products, the amount of automotive chips is not large, and there will be no shortage of normal.
However, since 2020, special circumstances such as the epidemic have led to insufficient automotive chip production capacity.
Specifically, first of all, the emergence of the epidemic has prevented factories in Europe from operating, affecting chip production capacity.
Second, the epidemic has spawned a large number of remote offices, the sales of electronic information equipment such as notebook computers have increased, and the consumption of chips has increased significantly, resulting in an overall shortage of chips.
In addition, due to various risk considerations, leading companies have begun to step up stocking. For example, they only stocked goods for three months, but now stocks for one or two years.
In addition, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers have also increased their purchases of chips.
"The auto industry pursues the so-called zero inventory, produces as many products as it comes, and the production cycle is always scheduled. It is very regular. Last year, due to the impact of the epidemic, car sales began to decline, and many automakers cut orders for chips. When industry sales began to pick up, there was a shortage of chips in the automotive industry,” said Yang Fan.
Ye Shengji said that the upgrading of the automobile industry has greatly increased the use of chips.
In order to meet higher functional, power consumption, performance and other requirements, a single device has increased demand for chip use.
The demand for chips for new energy, new emission standards, and intelligence has doubled.
Alleviating the shortage of automotive chips mainly lies in production capacity.
More than 60% of the world's automotive-grade chip wafers are processed by TSMC, so TSMC's production capacity adjustment is very important.
TSMC has indicated that it will give priority to supplying automotive chip orders and Apple's orders in the third quarter of 2021.
If the production capacity can be further increased, the chip production process will be "optimized" to make it more efficient and prioritized to produce automotive chips.
Yang Fan said that when the automotive chip shortage was very serious in the first quarter of this year, TSMC has begun to adjust part of its production capacity to produce automotive chips. Generally speaking, the chip production cycle is about five months. Therefore, the shortage of automotive chips is expected to be alleviated in the third quarter.
Ye Shengji also pointed out that the current capacity of the semiconductor industry provides greater support to the automotive industry. When the automotive industry is not short of chips, other industries will undergo cyclical adjustments for six months. It is expected that the entire semiconductor industry supply will return to balance by the end of 2022.
The shortage of automotive chip supply is not only a common problem in the world, but also reflects the deep-seated problem of the mismatch between supply and demand in China's automobile industry and semiconductor industry.
At the same time, this is also an opportunity for Chinese chip companies.
Dong Xiaoping, deputy director of the Electronic Information Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, previously stated that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will continue to guide enterprises to increase technological research on automotive semiconductors and promote the improvement of automotive semiconductor production line manufacturing capabilities.
Ye Shengji said that after the chip shortage crisis, China's auto industry needs to establish an autonomous and controllable car-level chip industry system.
He suggested that automotive chips should be included in major technological development projects.
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