How to eliminate the anxiety of new energy vehicles under the tide of "core shortage"
The news that the recent global automotive chip shortage will cause a decline in global automotive production in 2021 has caused anxiety for the entire automotive industry, especially new energy vehicles.
Chips are the foundation of the development of the entire information age.
Electricity, connectivity, and intelligence are the development directions of the automotive industry, and chips have become the key to supporting the transformation and upgrading of the automotive industry.
"The Third World New Energy Vehicle Conference" (WNEVC 2021) will be held in Haikou from September 15th to 17th.
In the meantime, in response to industry anxiety, many experts conducted in-depth discussions on the opportunities and challenges brought by the in-depth transformation of the automotive industry to chips, as well as the development path of independent automotive chip industrialization.
"Chip shortage" is a challenge and an opportunity
In the smart era, the penetration rate of chips has grown steadily.
In addition, driven by a series of national support policies for new energy vehicles and the "dual carbon" goal, the rapid development of new energy vehicles in recent years has driven the rapid increase in global chip demand.
The demands of both the market and technology have also brought major opportunities to the development of automotive chips.
Zhang Rui, deputy director of the Institute of Advanced Integrated Circuit Manufacturing Technology of Zhejiang University, analyzed that the "chip shortage" affects not only new energy vehicles, but the overall development of the automotive industry.
Zhang Rui analyzed that from the perspective of chip manufacturing, the root cause of the "chip shortage" is the imbalance between supply and demand.
In addition, the long verification cycle of automotive-grade chips and high thresholds impose higher requirements on the accumulation of manufacturers.
According to statistics, in the current scale of my country's entire automobile industry, imported chips account for 90%, even key system chips are all foreign monopolies, and the autonomy rate of other body electronic chips does not exceed 10%.
Yuan Chengyin, general manager of the National New Energy Vehicle Technology Innovation Center, said that the cost of new energy smart car chips has increased significantly and rapidly. "How much share China can occupy in this huge market is a problem we face."
According to expert analysis, China has become the world's largest automotive market, and the localization of automotive-grade chips has a large-scale foundation.
Although there are a large number of automotive chip companies in my country, they have not yet formed their core competitiveness, especially the lack of key links in the chip industry chain.
Deeply plow in the field of chip technology to achieve profitability
"As a core key component of the automotive industry, automotive-grade chips will determine the direction of China's future automotive market. It is a key issue that must be resolved by self-reliance." Yuan Chengyin said.
"Why can our country produce chips, but we can't produce automotive chips, especially high value-added chips?" The question raised by Zhang Rui is also worth pondering.
"The power consumption of chips produced in my country is 55% higher than that of imported chips. Under the same power consumption, the performance of domestic chips is 8% lower than that of imported chips. The complete set of chip manufacturing processes in my country is weaker than the advanced level of foreign countries." Zhang Rui analyzed.
Chip manufacturing can be simply divided into three stages: design, production, and packaging and testing.
Around these three stages, a lot of supporting industries or supporting enterprises are needed, including silicon wafers, lithography machines, electronic special gases, high-precision photoresists, etc., and technology "jamming" may occur in each link.
Zhang Rui believes that competition in the field of automotive chip manufacturing is actually a competition across the entire industry chain.
The current problems facing my country's chip manufacturing just show that we need to make progress in the entire industry chain.
From the analysis of technical profitability, Zhang Rui believes that the future opportunities for my country's chip technology in the development of the chip manufacturing enterprise industry need to impact more advanced manufacturing processes.
"Chinese companies can target the 55-nanometer process node. This has many advantages in terms of technology."
"In the field of automotive power semiconductor devices, especially in the field of IGBTs (insulated gate bipolar transistors), domestic manufacturers can already provide IGBT products for all power segments." Good news from Shen Hua, chairman of Jiaxing Star Semiconductor Co., Ltd. , So that the person in charge of the car company present was very excited.
"Star Company took the lead in breaking the monopoly of domestic automotive-grade power modules that have been monopolized by foreign manufacturers. The company's silicon carbide modules have won orders for passenger cars and commercial vehicles at home and abroad, and mass production will begin this year and mass production next year."
Promote the ecological construction of China's automotive chip industry
"The innovation ecology of China's automotive chip industry should be a full life cycle format from industry standards to key technology research, to core chip development, to product evaluation and certification, and finally to actual vehicle verification." Yuan Chengyin said to car companies and chip suppliers. The relationship between future mutual growth and rebirth is proposed and put into practice.
"The chip industry is a strongly bound supply chain system with relatively high industry barriers. Our research found that after the new product is designed, there is no way to get it on the car quickly when it is obtained from the OEM."
"Domestic car chip companies are still facing manufacturing bottlenecks. At present, there are very few domestic companies that can undertake car-level chip manufacturing. Therefore, the rise of domestic car chips depends on the dual improvement of R&D and manufacturing." Yuan Chengyin said, " Therefore, we propose to build an industry chain, led by a common innovation platform, to achieve smooth information, enterprise-led, government support, industry chaining, and alliances."
In September last year, Yuan Chengyin initiated and united multiple departments to establish the China Automotive Chip Industry Strategic Alliance. He introduced that after the establishment of the alliance, a lot of useful work has been carried out, including the introduction of automotive chip commercial insurance, so that car companies dare to use domestic car chips; secondly, the cooperation with all walks of the industry chain to promote the construction of a standard system for automotive chips. The alliance also actively promotes the testing and verification process of automotive chips, and promotes the connection of upstream and downstream supply and demand between automotive chip manufacturers and vehicle companies, including joint development.