A car chip was Raised to 2,500 yuan! Yu Chengdong shouted that the sky-high price of car chips is in short supply

Recently, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business and smart car BU CEO, said in an interview with the media that he could not accept the sky-high chip price in the automotive industry. When Huawei first entered the automotive industry last year, the lack of chips in the automotive industry did not know how serious it was. A chip of 10 yuan or 20 yuan was fired to 2,500 yuan a piece, and then it needed to be used in a car. To 9 chips, this price is too expensive.

Feeling the chip crisis, not only Huawei, which has just empowered the automotive industry with a cooperative model, but also the big companies that dominate the global automotive industry have also issued a warning. Recently, Volkswagen Chief Financial Officer Arnold Antlitz said in an interview with German media that before 2024, the supply department of semiconductor chips is too likely to return to a state that fully meets demand. While the core shortage may begin to ease by the end of 2022, the structural shortfall may not be resolved until 2024. In 2021, Volkswagen ranks second in total global car sales, reaching 8.9 million vehicles, but sales are down 4% from last year. The head of Volkswagen China said the shortage of chips was the primary reason for the decline in the company's production and sales.

Current Status of Automotive Chip Market

The latest report released by IC Insights, a well-known research organization, pointed out that in 2021, the shipment of automotive chips will reach 52.4 billion, an annual increase of 30%, and the growth rate is much higher than the 22% increase in overall semiconductor shipments. The highest level of growth in automotive chip shipments since the beginning of the year.

However, under the premise of surging demand, even if the production capacity and shipment volume of suppliers have increased significantly, the entire automotive chip market is still in serious shortage. In order to expand the overall supply of automotive chips, major wafer manufacturers including TSMC and UMC have invested in manpower to increase the production capacity of automotive chips. In addition to the large wafer factories, IDM giants STMicroelectronics, Renesas, Infineon, etc. have all deployed their own production capacity to produce automotive chips. We can see that the automotive application field has become the terminal market for the current stage and even the medium and long-term industry layout in the future, and the growth potential cannot be underestimated.

ST chip re-issued a price increase letter, some models of chips were fired to 2,800 yuan

Recently, STMicroelectronics once again issued a price increase letter to distributors, announcing that it will increase the price of all product lines in the second quarter of 2022, including existing backlog products. The price increase letter highlights a hot market for microcontrollers (MCUs) and a puzzling shortage of semiconductor components.

According to public information, STMicroelectronics, Infineon, and NXP are the three major semiconductor manufacturers in Europe. STMicroelectronics has a global MCU market share of 14.5%. As early as the fourth quarter of 2021, STMicroelectronics has already raised prices. In the second quarter, the price adjustment again attracted market attention, reflecting the tight supply and demand of some semiconductor components market. At present, STMicroelectronics has not disclosed the rate of product price increase this time.

The prices of STM8S003F3P6TR and STM32F103VCT6 have risen slightly. It is worth noting that the market price of ST's brake system chips has been soaring recently, and other automotive chips have also risen. Moreover, there are still large gaps in high-end products and automotive-grade chips, and the delivery time is still very long.

At the beginning of this year, another vehicle-mounted MCU chip from ST was rapidly raising the price. The L9369 chip is the core chip of the body electronic stability system produced by STMicroelectronics. Previously, due to the impact of the epidemic, the production capacity of the chip factory was greatly reduced. The original price of this piece is 20 The price of a variety of chips has risen sharply. Merchants in the SEG Electronics Market in Huangpu District, Shanghai: If it is a little difficult to get the spot, it used to be tens of yuan, but now it is 2800 yuan, excluding tax.

The L9369 isn't the only automotive chip to see a big price hike. It is reported that the prices of most automotive chips are currently rising, and the increase is several times smaller. Since automotive-grade chips generally use mature processes, chips produced a few years ago can also be used. Distributors hoarding chips to drive up prices also occur from time to time.

In addition, Infineon MOS products are basically in the state of distribution. The delivery time of low-voltage MOS is 42-52 weeks, the delivery time of high-voltage MOS is 36-52 weeks, and the delivery time of IGBT materials is 39-50 weeks. Chip delivery falls in 45-52 weeks. Although the original factory delivery time is long at this stage, the scarce materials are also being delivered one after another. The original factory previously said that automotive chips such as IGBTs will be more in short supply in 2022.

Analysis of the reasons for the increase in chip prices? Can domestic automotive chips help?

The latest analysis report from IC Insights believes that in addition to factors such as supply chain problems, the real reason for the shortage is that the demand for automotive chips will surge in 2022, and the increased production capacity of semiconductor suppliers cannot fully match the market demand. Jean-Marc Chery, president and CEO of STMicroelectronics, pointed out that the global chip shortage will gradually improve this year, but the supply chain will not return to "normal" levels until at least the first half of 2023.

At present, in addition to ST's announcement of a price increase in the second quarter, the price increases of Infineon and NXP's automotive chips will also follow up. The three companies all believe that the price increase is more driven by the cost side, and at the same time, the price increase brought about by product upgrades It is not intentional manipulation by the chip factory.

These big manufacturers have said before that in the wave of electrification and intelligence of vehicles, the current price changes will be trending. According to overseas media reports, Infineon, NXP, Renesas, and Texas Instruments are all preparing to further increase their quotations for automotive MCUs or power devices. The industry expects that Renesas and NXP may increase the price of automotive chips by 10% to 20% in the second quarter, and chip dealers expect that the price of automotive MCUs will increase by another 15% to 20% in the second quarter of 2022.

In the case of chip shortages, finding alternative solutions is one of the solutions of major car manufacturers. At present, it is also a good direction to use domestic automotive chips instead. On April 12, the automotive-grade chip company Xinchi Technology released the high-performance and high-reliability automotive-grade MCU E3 "Control Chip" series of products. The CPU frequency of Coretronics E3 series products is up to 800MHz, with up to 6 CPU cores, 4 of which can be configured as dual-core lockstep or independent operation, filling the gap in the domestic high-end and high-safety-level automotive MCU market. The E3 MCU has set very high stability and safety goals at the beginning of its design, that is, the vehicle-regulated reliability standard reaches the AEC-Q100 Grade 1 level, and the functional safety standard reaches the ISO 26262 ASIL D level.

It is reported that the MCU E3 series products can be fully used in applications that require extremely high safety and reliability, such as wire-controlled chassis, brake control, BMS, ADAS/autonomous driving motion control, LCD instrumentation, HUD, streaming media vision system CMS, etc.

summary:

This year, it is a foregone conclusion that the demand for automotive chips is hot. The price of high-performance automotive-grade MCU products produced by ST and Infineon has risen. At present, these two major manufacturers have increased investment and increased production capacity to cope with the current situation of prolonged delivery. Due to various external factors such as rising costs and increased logistics costs due to the epidemic, the price increase of automotive-grade MCU chips will continue in the second quarter. OEMs such as Weilai, Ideal, and Tesla are also raising car prices to absorb the increased cost of chips, logistics, and battery raw materials.

The current market share of domestic automotive-grade chips is relatively low, but with the launch of new products in the automotive-grade MCU market by Xinchi Technology and Xinwangwei, it is believed that there is a certain space for replacement. Industry experts also said that domestic vehicle-grade MCUs still have a lot of room for growth in important areas such as body safety and body control. The key is whether the reliability and functional safety of products can reach international standards.