Concept Tracking | Continuous Shortage of Supply in the Automotive Chip Market: "Lack of Core and Soul" Becoming a Shortfall for Automobile Enterprises, Urgent Domestic Replacement

Recently, there has been a continuous shortage of supply for automotive chips such as MCUs and some power semiconductors, and delivery times have been continuously extended. Some major manufacturers have launched price increase plans. According to a survey by American chip supplier Sourcengine, as of November 2022, the delivery time for power semiconductors has been extended from 31 to 51 weeks at the end of May 2021 to 39 to 64 weeks.
In terms of the dynamics of major manufacturers, the shortage of automotive materials by Texas Instruments in December remains the main theme, such as the high popularity and high prices of serializer/deserializer chips used in automotive ADAS; ST vehicle grade MCU and F4 series MCU are currently relatively scarce, such as STM32F429ZET6, SPC560B50L3B4E0X, etc; Enzipu's automotive and industrial products are still out of stock, and there are reports that NXP will experience a new round of price increases, with a range of about 15%. In addition, some power semiconductor products such as Ansemy and Infineon car specification MOS are in short supply, and prices continue to be high.
According to AutoForecast Solutions, due to a shortage of automotive chips, a total of 10.2 million cars were reduced globally in 2021, with China reducing production by approximately 1.98 million cars, accounting for approximately 19% of the global total reduction. It is expected that the global automotive industry will reduce production by 2-3 million vehicles in 2023.
For a long time in the past, "lack of core" and "lack of soul" were the weaknesses of China's automotive enterprises, and the degree of autonomy and controllability of car grade chips and operating systems was not high. Among them, the self-sufficiency rate of China's automotive grade chips is less than 5%, and most of them are low-end products, with key chips being restricted by foreign countries. According to relevant data, there are currently over 416000 chip related enterprises in China. Among them, 68000 newly registered enterprises were added from January to July 2022, and 26.8% of chip related enterprises were established within one year.
Industry insiders point out that the main types of chips currently in demand in the automotive industry are not advanced process technology, but mature process products - mainly including main control chip MCU, power supply chips, and drivers, accounting for 74% of the chip demand, followed by signal chip CAN/LIN and other bus transceivers.
Analysts point out that although automotive chip factories are building and implementing new wafer production lines in 2021, and attempting to transfer the manufacturing process of automotive chips to existing production lines and future new 12 inch production lines to increase production capacity and achieve economies of scale, semiconductor equipment delivery cycles often exceed six months, coupled with production line adjustments, product validation, and capacity enhancement, which require a longer time, This means that the new production capacity may not be able to effectively help alleviate the current MCU demand of car companies until 2023-2024.
Changan Automobile, GAC Group (5.58, 0.02, 0.36%), and SAIC Group are all facing chip shortages:
Zhu Huarong, Chairman of Changan Automobile, previously stated, "Lack of cores and expensive electricity have become the most painful points in our industry. From January to September 2022, Changan Automobile has lost 606000 vehicles due to the impact of lack of cores and expensive electricity, as well as limited electricity due to the epidemic
GAC Group stated that:“