The dark cloud of "chip shortage" shrouded in the automotive industry has not yet completely dissipated. A piece of news related to automotive chips has hinted at the new trend of the incident.
On August 3, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued an announcement on its official website stating that in response to prominent problems such as hype and high prices in the auto chip market, it has initiated investigations into auto chip distributors suspected of bidding up prices based on price monitoring and reporting clues.
The announcement stated that the General Administration of Market Supervision will continue to pay attention to the market price order of important commodities such as chips, and further strengthen supervision and enforcement, and severely investigate and punish illegal acts such as hoarding, price drive ups, and price collusion.
Some netizens exclaimed that there are so many "hidden rules" in the car chip manufacturing and procurement process.
Some netizens have also called for greater price control to "relieve the burden" of auto companies that have been complaining about the supply of auto chips.
"From an economics point of view, value determines prices, and supply and demand affect prices. When supply exceeds demand, violent price increases are prone to occur." Xue Xu, an associate professor at the School of Economics of Peking University, believes that "abnormal price increases are often affected by products." Attributes, value cycles, industry environment and other factors are affected. In any case, driving up prices will disrupt economic order and have a bad impact on the long-term development of the industry."
"The more intelligent the car, the more dependent on this small chip"
Entering 2021, many car companies have stopped work and reduced production due to "core shortage", including Volkswagen, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Suzuki, Volvo and other car companies are deeply involved.
The forecast report released by the world-renowned information service provider HIS shows that in the first quarter of 2021, the number of light vehicle production reductions caused by chip shortages will reach 672,000, and this number will increase to 1.3 million in the second quarter.
After entering the second half of the year, the pessimism brought about by the "lack of core" issue has spread in the global automotive industry.
Alexander Seitz, CFO of the Volkswagen brand, said in early August: "Although there are signs that the semiconductor supply bottleneck is beginning to ease, from a supply perspective, we expect that the third quarter will still face very big challenges."
Although BMW raised its 2021 profit forecast, it still warned that global semiconductor chip shortages and rising raw material prices will affect its performance in the second half of the year.
Many brands under the Volkswagen Group have also expressed their views recently that the shortage of automotive chips will continue to intensify in the next few months.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk once said bluntly: "The panic about the exhaustion of car chips makes every company over-order. It is like the shortage of toilet paper in American supermarkets, but on a larger scale."
In addition to overseas car companies, domestic OEMs are also facing the problem of "core shortage".
“Today’s smart electric vehicles require a total of more than 1,700 chips, large and small, which is different from traditional fuel vehicles.” When talking about the importance of chips, Xiaopeng Motors Chairman He Xiaopeng said that those intelligent The higher the degree of the car, the stronger the dependence on the chip.
For example, due to the “lack of core” issue, Great Wall Motor’s explosive new car, the Tank 300, can only produce about 7,000 vehicles per month. In order to ensure that car users can pick up the car smoothly, Great Wall Motors has even announced the suspension of “orders” several times. ".
The reporter noticed that similar situations were not uncommon in the summary of major auto companies in the first half of this year.
Drive up prices or over-purchase? Who is the driving force behind the skyrocketing chip prices
On the one hand, auto OEMs are subject to "core shortages" and frequently stop supply and stop production; on the other hand, chip prices are rising more and more, even showing an exponential increase.
"Since March of this year, due to the limited supply of chips, some of our models have had the problem of limited production capacity. Consumers and dealers have urged news one after another. There is no way, we can only purchase chips at higher prices. "Sun Jun (pseudonym) of the purchasing department of a large domestic automobile OEM revealed to reporters that the price of chip supply had risen about twice at that time.
Sun Jun recalled that by April, the "chip shortage" situation became more and more serious, and the price of chip supply reached a new height.
"Some of our production lines have been shut down for a few days, and the current supply price of some chips has risen to 10 times. But as long as they are in stock, companies still have to rush to place orders."
In the second half of the year, the “core shortage” in the automotive industry seems to continue, and chip prices are still skyrocketing.
Statistics show that the latest price of car networking navigation chips is 5-7 times that of the same period last year, and the highest price increase of some key car electronics chips has even reached more than 20 times.
"Normally, it seems that trade between B2B companies does not require middlemen to "make the difference", but if there is a market monopoly, prices can be easily manipulated." Xue Xu analyzed that as both capital-intensive and capital-intensive In technology-intensive industries, the market share of the chip industry is highly concentrated in a few companies such as Intel, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm, which is likely to form a market monopoly.
"Under normal circumstances, the degree of scale determines the cost of supply and marketing. Through mass production of the same model, the original manufacturer can greatly reduce the unit cost of a single product. For cost considerations, the original manufacturer tends to produce the same type of components in large quantities, so it has Customers with large-scale ordering capabilities can obtain relatively low purchase prices and strong supply guarantees." Xue Xu explained.
But as the analysis report of the international rating agency Moody's stated, because the manufacturing industry, especially auto parts suppliers, has been pursuing the principle of "just-in-time inventory management" to maximize capital efficiency, they often do not stock up on raw materials such as chips.
Therefore, the role of "agents" has also emerged between auto parts suppliers and chip companies.
These "agents" will carry out a certain percentage of commissions and undertake functions such as agent advancement and stocking.
In this mode, auto OEMs put forward demands to auto parts suppliers, and auto parts suppliers find agents to get the goods, and the agents will eventually contact the chip makers directly.
At present, basically head chip companies have agents in China.
According to data from Zhiyan Consulting, in the field of electronic components, blue-chip super customers who are less than 1% of the total number of electronic product manufacturers purchase directly from the original factory, and the purchase amount is about 44% of the total share, accounting for more than 99% of the total remaining manufacturers Customers purchase 56% of the share through distributor channels.
"Whether it is the price increase of raw materials or the original chip factory, it is usually publicized, and the price increase is limited." Wilson analyst Xu Hong said, "Among the many reasons that make chip prices increase by tens or even hundreds of times, distribution The hazards of commercial stocks and roasted seeds cannot be ignored."
According to industry insiders, after placing an order with the original factory, some agent distributors will only release a small part of the goods due to insufficient goods and other reasons, and the rest will be hoarded and sold at a high price.
After some distributors get the chips, they will choose to carry cheaper alternative chips, and then resell the high-priced imported chips.
Xu Haidong, deputy chief engineer of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, believes that in addition to some distributors ignoring market rules and driving up prices, the problem of "core shortage" has been over-interpreted, which is also the cause of excessive scavenging and stockpiling by automakers.
To some extent, this exacerbated the imbalance between supply and demand, and ultimately caused a vicious circle.
Consolidating the automotive chip supply chain still needs "marathon" persistence
"Faced with a series of chaos in the auto industry due to the lack of cores, the state is now taking action to crack down on chip speculation and drive up prices. It is undoubtedly very timely to use the'visible hand' to make adjustments. And effective.” Xue Xu believes that, on the one hand, this move will encourage the auto chips stocked by dealers to enter the market, and further alleviate the "core shortage" problem of downstream auto manufacturers; on the other hand, this will benefit the market for auto chips. Prices have stabilized overall.
Xu Hong believes that this time the State Administration of Market Supervision filed a case and investigated and dealt with suspected violations of auto chip dealers. It also gave the entire auto and parts dealer industry a lively law-abiding lesson and sent a clear signal.
"The entire automotive chip dealer industry should be aware that it must first abide by laws and regulations. Earning ill-gotten gains must be investigated and punished. At the same time, this also shows that dealers of auto chip and other parts and components will take advantage of the opportunity to maliciously increase prices if they want to fish in troubled waters. , It will definitely not work." Xu Hong said bluntly.
However, although this move can solve the chaos caused by the "core shortage tide" to a certain extent, it is difficult to fundamentally change the core shortage problem.
Affected by factors such as the new crown pneumonia epidemic, rising material costs, and the continuous popularization of automobile intelligence, global chip production capacity is still in short supply.
In response to this situation, Dong Xiaoping, deputy director of the Electronic Information Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, called on the automotive industry to pay more attention to and support automotive semiconductor companies and innovative products, strengthen the construction of a diversified supply chain, and provide a strong support for improving automotive semiconductor technology capabilities. The application traction, and seize the opportunity to strengthen the sorting and research of key semiconductors in the automotive field, strengthen R&D, and gather talents.
According to Yuan Chengyin, secretary general of the China Automotive Chip Industry Innovation Strategic Alliance, to solve the urgent need for chips, the upstream and downstream of China's automotive industry chain must explore the reasons and roots, and "carry out an industry-wide self-help operation."
He suggested that China's auto industry should pay close attention to building an industrial ecology suitable for the development of auto chips.
"The short-term goal of China's automotive chip development is to prevent'supply cuts', the medium-term goal is to promote collaborative innovation in various fields of automobile technology, and the long-term goal is to realize the role of China's automobile production and sales country and promote the technological progress of the world's automobile industry."
In addition, Yuan Chengyin said that relevant departments should also increase policy support, give full play to the key role of local governments and leading companies, and concentrate strength and resources to promote the improvement of the supply capacity of automotive semiconductors.
In particular, emerging fields such as new energy, intelligent network connection and autonomous driving should seize opportunities and give full play to their comparative advantages to support the high-quality development of the automotive industry.
In fact, in the past two years, the automotive industry has suffered several rounds of "turns and turns" around the core product of "chips".
In the view of Dong Yang, co-chairman of the China Automotive Chip Industry Innovation Strategic Alliance, the innovation and development of China's automotive industry must have a nearby, regional, and powerful automotive chip industry as a support and cornerstone.
"Developing the chip industry must not be impatient, but you must pay attention." As Dong Yang said, making the chip industry bigger and stronger is by no means an easy task, but it also requires the patience of the day. The move of chip prices has already conveyed the determination to overcome the difficulty of "chip shortage" in automobiles.
China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily reporter Zhang Zhenqi Source: China Youth Daily