For two years, the cloud of “lack of core” still shrouds the automotive industry, and the resulting sharp rise in chip prices is staggering.
“In one year, the price of stl9369, the core chip of body electronic stability system produced by Italian French semiconductor, rose from about 20 yuan to 2800 yuan.” An unnamed merchant of Shanghai SEG electronic market told the reporter of daily economic news.
The rising prices of chips and other materials have sharply increased the cost pressure of many new energy vehicle enterprises. Since the beginning of this year, many auto companies have begun to raise the prices of their products. For example, the average price of FAW Volkswagen’s two new energy vehicles will rise by 5200 yuan, the price of Xiaopeng automobile products will rise by more than 4000 yuan, and the latest price of products announced by Weilai automobile will also rise compared with last year. Even Tesla, which has a good sales volume, recently raised the prices of domestic model 3 high-performance version and model y long-range and high-performance models by 10000 yuan.
“The price adjustment is mainly due to the rise of production costs. The prices of chips, power batteries and other materials are rising. It is difficult to say whether the car price will rise in the future.” A Tesla salesperson in Shanghai told the daily economic news.
“out of stock + hype” makes chip prices soar
According to the reporter, at present, the types of chips in shortage in the automotive industry mainly include the main control chip, MCU + power chip and driver chip, followed by communication chips such as signal chain can / Lin. Due to the serious shortage, the prices of most auto chips are rising, and those with small price increases have also doubled several times.
“In fact, the price increase of chips from the original factory will not be very exaggerated. For example, for chips sold for one yuan, the original factory will rise by 50% at most. Now most of the price surge problems we see in China are speculation, and there are many factors such as agents and dealers.” A technical expert from a foreign automotive semiconductor company disclosed to reporters.
As upstream suppliers of chips, many semiconductor companies have raised product prices due to the rise of upstream costs such as wafer and packaging. For example, Infineon issued a notice to dealers that the imbalance between supply and demand of semiconductor capacity will run through 2022. Under the influence of the rising cost structure, the company can no longer absorb the increased costs by itself. The letter was interpreted by the market as that Infineon will raise the product price.
“The ex factory price of our company’s semiconductors has only started to rise since the beginning of this year, up 16%, which has not risen before. They are shipped according to the previous price, but not necessarily in the external market. The price obtained in the market may be seven or eight times worse than that of our shipment.” The above technical experts said that the price increase of semiconductor manufacturers is estimated to be 20% ~ 30%, which is generally not too outrageous. The price surge of hundreds of times must be artificially fried.
After some hoarding speculation by agents and dealers, the price of chips may soar several times or even dozens of times. Nevertheless, some vehicle manufacturers are still forced to seek “sky high price” chips in the market.
For example, similar to the core chip of the body electronic stability system whose price soared 140 times above, it is a necessary product for the vehicle to leave the factory. If the vehicle enterprise can’t get the goods from the manufacturer, the vehicle can’t be sold offline. Compared with the price of a complete vehicle, car companies are still willing to bear the chip cost of 2800 yuan. But most parts manufacturers may not be able to absorb such “sky high” costs.
\u3000\u3000 “The cost of purchasing chips has indeed risen, but we will not buy some hyped chips in the market, because there is a great risk. Many chips in the market have incorrect channels and unknown origin. They may be stored for too long or disassembled from old cars. If they are installed on automotive products, the risk is too high, especially when our company is engaged in braking system So I won’t buy hyped chips. ” Zhang Quanhui, CEO of Suzhou haizhibo Electronic Technology Co., Ltd., told reporters.
In Zhang Quanhui’s view, the company can accept a certain amount of price increase, such as 10% ~ 20%. However, there are many chips that have risen dozens of times in the market, so there is no need to buy them. “We will not cooperate with these companies. Rational companies will purchase through normal channels and will not make huge profits in this way.” Zhang Quanhui said.
with chip varieties, and the shipping cycle is up to 18 months
In fact, since 2020, the global automotive industry has been plagued by chip shortage. According to the data of auto forecast solutions (AFS), due to the shortage of automobile chip supply, the global production of automobiles was reduced by 11.31 million in 2021, a decrease of 14.6%, of which the production of Chinese market was reduced by 2.148 million in 2021. According to the latest prediction of AFS, due to the shortage of chips, global carmakers may reduce production by more than 1 million vehicles in 2022.
On the whole, the chip supply is mainly impacted by two times: the first stage is from the fourth quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021. Due to the covid-19 epidemic and the impact of natural disasters, the chip supply capacity is seriously restricted; The second stage is the third quarter of 2021. The multi-national epidemic has occurred repeatedly. The chip supplier countries represented by Malaysia have been affected by the epidemic, the chip shipment speed has slowed down, and the “lack of core” has added to the haze.
“The shortage in the first stage is due to the covid-19 epidemic. Those semiconductor companies are pessimistic about the market expectations and reduce production. However, the actual situation is completely different. The consumer electronics market (demand) With the sharp increase, the sales of tablet computers, mobile phones, smart homes and other products have risen all the way, resulting in a very tight production capacity of wafers and packaging plants upstream of semiconductors, and automobile chips have begun to be nervous. In the second stage, the epidemic in Europe was very serious, and MCU chips were mainly made by several foreign-funded enterprises. The epidemic led to great restrictions on their factories, which had a great impact on production capacity. ” The above technical experts said.
After being impacted by various factors, the shipment cycle of chips is also much longer than that before the epidemic. “The delivery cycle will be extended. Our company has extended about 50% ~ 100%, and many companies can’t even give the delivery time.” The above technical experts said.
“It normally takes six months to get goods from chip manufacturers. Now it has been extended to 12 months, and even 18 months for some varieties.” Zhang Quanhui revealed.
In addition, due to the extremely strict consideration of safety and reliability in the automotive industry, its quality control is also very strict from parts suppliers to vehicle manufacturers. The supply chain of automotive chips is very long and stable, so it is very difficult to make adjustments in the short term.
\u3000\u3000 “We have strict requirements for upstream Fabs and packaging plants. For example, in the production process of a product, only two Fabs and three packaging plants are designated. If we want to switch other manufacturers, we need to negotiate with the terminal manufacturers, which is a very long process. For example, Malaysia was affected by the epidemic some time ago, and the shutdown of packaging plants has a great impact , there is no way to supplement the production capacity from other places, and it is difficult for the supply chain to adjust. ” The above technical experts said.
car companies forced to “reduce distribution”
“Because of the ‘lack of core’, many car enterprises have the situation that individual parts cannot be installed. However, many consumers are in urgent need of cars, and car enterprises will not take the initiative to reduce sales because of the lack of individual parts. The best choice is for car enterprises to deliver vehicles to consumers first, and then install the parts after the chips are sufficient.” Cui Dongshu, Secretary General of the national passenger car market information joint committee, said.
In order not to affect sales, many car companies have formulated emergency production strategies, including adjusting production priorities, purchasing chips directly from chip manufacturers, changing and adjusting car configuration, and even trying to produce cars without parts.
The reporter learned that Daimler, Volkswagen commercial vehicles and Tesla have publicly said that because the “lack of core” can not guarantee the full line configuration for new cars, they have designed new control units or changed the software system.
Some car companies were forced to choose “reduction” and began to reduce the use of chips. For example, GM said it would temporarily abandon the seat heating function; BMW has announced to cancel the touch function of the central information display of several models, and consumers can use iDrive and voice assistant to control the vehicle.
Under the continuous perplexity of “lack of core”, the news of shutdown, production reduction and delayed delivery of some models of auto enterprises also came frequently. On March 10, GAC Motor said that the global chip shortage had a certain impact on the production and delivery of its M8 and shadow leopard models. Among them, the chip supply of M8 model has improved and gradually returned to normal. The decline in sales of shadow leopard is mainly affected by the shortage of chip supply of ZF dp-eps steering system.
In addition, Great Wall Motor Company Limited(601633) , which is deeply troubled by the “lack of core”. According to the latest sales data, in February, Great Wall Motor Company Limited(601633) sold about 70800 new cars, a year-on-year decrease of 20.5%. The reason is mainly affected by the insufficient supply of body electronic stability system (ESP) produced by Bosch auto parts (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. It is reported that Bosch is the exclusive supplier of ESP configuration for Great Wall Motor Company Limited(601633) main models.
“At present, Great Wall Motor Company Limited(601633) is actively taking a variety of measures to actively respond, including accelerating the layout of the chip industry, strengthening the construction of the system in the field of parts and components, expanding global procurement, etc., and striving to quickly solve the delivery problem. The tight supply situation will improve in March.” President Wang Fengying told reporters.
In fact, in the face of the impact of “lack of core”, almost all auto enterprises are actively taking countermeasures to provide maximum guarantee for stable production and sales. For example, Chongqing Changan Automobile Company Limited(000625) chairman Zhu Huarong said: “on the supply side, we insist on ‘grabbing, forcing and pulling’ to fight for resources.” Specifically, Chongqing Changan Automobile Company Limited(000625) short term identifies the production capacity risk of parts and components in advance, signs a supply guarantee agreement with suppliers, based on the three main business lines of business, manufacturing and technology, and goes all out to fight for materials through the way of “production capacity construction and improvement + spare warehouse”; In the medium and long term, we should establish a strategic procurement supplier system, further improve the medium and long-term supply guarantee strategy, and avoid supply risks from the source of design and procurement.
domestic chip replacement is expected to be realized in 5 years
From the perspective of industrial chain, China’s auto production and sales account for about 33% of the global market, but auto semiconductors and other parts mainly rely on overseas suppliers. China’s auto semiconductor output value accounts for less than 5% of the global share, and the import of some key parts accounts for more than 80% to 90%. Therefore, many people in the industry began to call for promoting the localization of automobile chips and accelerating the replacement of domestic chips with foreign chips.
\u3000\u3000 “The dilemma of ‘lack of core’ will have a certain impact on our R & D strategy. In the past, vehicle specification chips were almost monopolized by foreign companies, and we generally do not consider domestic chips, but now in some application links, functional parts and even some key parts, we will also consider using domestic chips as technical reserves, which is also a great benefit to domestic chip companies.” Zhang Quanhui said.
Although the technical difficulty is not as difficult as the autopilot chip, the localization of MCU chip is also difficult to achieve in the short term. “In the long run, domestic vehicle specification chips have the opportunity to catch up with and surpass, but it takes time to polish. The links of wafer, packaging and testing still need to rely on foreign suppliers, and Chinese technology can not reach them. For example, the horizon of making autonomous driving chips, and its wafers are also produced by TSMC. It will take a long time to localize the complete chip industry chain. ”The above-mentioned technical experts told reporters that domestic chips need to be tested and iterated continuously on the whole vehicle, and basically need to make two or three generations of products before they can be stable. Therefore, he believes that some more mature Chinese vehicle specification chips will come out in five years, and domestic chips still can not fill the problem of “core shortage” in the short term.
Zhang Quanhui believes that after the “core shortage”, a large number of domestic chip start-ups have emerged and began to develop key chips such as MCU. However, it has not yet reached the experimental stage of the whole vehicle and is still in the verification stage of the laboratory. Zhang Quanhui judged that the first wave of domestic chips will be officially mass produced by 2024.
“The problem of ‘core shortage’ is difficult to alleviate in the short term, and it is expected to make a great improvement from the second half of 2023 to 2024.” Zhang Quanhui said.
Xu Daquan, executive vice president of Bosch China, believes that the chip supply in 2022 will still be unable to meet all the needs of the host plant, and this year’s automobile production will still be largely subject to the chip supply. However, with the new production capacity of chip manufacturers, the chip shortage is expected to be alleviated in the second half of this yearp align=”center”>
