[SMM special topic] Chip shortage "high fever does not go back" car companies began to actively save themselves chip factory can not sit down!

Since entering 2021, "lack of core" has become a "mantra" often spoken by many enterprises in the automobile circle. Recently, with the aggravation of the epidemic in Malaysia, the lack of core in the automobile market has become more and more stringent, and the major car companies have frequently cut production due to the shortage of chips. On Sept. 7, according to the latest data from AFS, the cumulative reduction in global car production reached 7.327 million as of Sept. 5, an increase of about 440000 over the previous week. At the same time, AFS also pointed out that European car production was the hardest hit last week, while China was the smallest, with 218000 cars cut in Europe and 2000 in China last week.

In detail, recently, a number of well-known car companies, including GM, Ford, Tesla, Nissan, Toyota and so on, have released production reduction information. Earlier, Japan's Toyota said that due to the epidemic and insufficient supply of spare parts, its car production had to be cut by 40% from late August to September, reducing global production by nearly 300000 vehicles, of which 140000 are expected to be cut in Japan and about 220000 overseas. Accordingly, from August 24 to September, 14 factories and 27 production lines in Japan are expected to be temporarily shut down. On August 27, Ford said that a shortage of chips had reduced its production by about 50% in the second quarter than planned. Ford announced on September 1 that it would cut its pickup truck production again. In the latest news on Sept. 8, Audi decided to reduce working hours at least until the middle of next year because it is expected that the chip shortage will continue into next year, which will be a drag on its car production. Even according to the latest news on September 7, FAW Audi said that due to its serious lack of chips, Audi A6L had only one day of production plan in September and basically had no production schedule.

And in the global lack of core environment, South Korea's auto industry is not immune, according to the South Korean auto industry data on September 1, under the impact of chip shortages and the continuing epidemic, car sales of South Korean automakers fell nearly 4.5% in August compared with the same period last year. South Korea's top five automakers-General Motors, Kia, Renault Samsung, Hyundai and Ssangyong-sold about 545000 cars in August, down from 570000 in the same period in 2020. Earlier, GM announced on Sept. 2 that it would suspend operations at most North American plants on September 13 and would make further adjustments in line with the progress of the supply chain. At present, with the exception of the production capacity of the Arlington assembly plant in Texas (which produces the high-margin full-size SUV), the Flint assembly plant (heavy truck), the Bowling Green (Corvette sports car) and some of the Lansing assembly plant (Chevrolet Comero, etc.), the rest of North America has stopped production; in addition, Renault has previously extended the suspension of production at three Spanish plants until the end of the year.

And India's largest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki, said at the end of August that its car production in September would be reduced by 60% due to the shortage of chips. From the above, it is not difficult to see that the shortage of chips has already spread to large and small car companies around the world, so when will this situation end? Here are some recent auto companies' forecasts for the future of the chip industry.

Voice of car companies:

At a press conference ahead of the Munich auto show on September 5, German auto executives warned that the crisis of global chip shortages could not be fully resolved in 2021.

Volkswagen: Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen, Europe's largest carmaker, admitted that Germany's Volkswagen's market share in China has fallen sharply because of a shortage of chips. It is worth mentioning that Volkswagen had predicted that the chip shortage would improve after the summer vacation, but this was not the case. And recently, many Volkswagen supplier factories have been closed due to the repeated epidemic in Malaysia.

Volkswagen's market share in China has declined due to a shortage of chips. "our business is relatively weak because of the shortage of semiconductors," he said. We have been hit harder in China than in other parts of the world. That's why we lost our market share. "

Diess also pointed out that his colleagues in China have been pushing for more semiconductors and said the lack of chips is a "really big problem." The company had expected the semiconductor industry to improve after the summer vacation, but this was not the case. In recent weeks, Malaysia, where many of Volkswagen's suppliers are located, has been hit hard by novel coronavirus, leading to the closure of several factories.

However, Diess believes that as the novel coronavirus epidemic is brought under control in the future, the chip shortage will gradually disappear, but the current chip shortage will continue for some time, to which the public will try to deal with it.

Daimler: Calenius, global president of Daimler Group CEO and Mercedes-Benz Automotive Group, said the chip shortage may not be resolved until 2023. Affected by the shortage of chips, Daimler recently lowered its annual sales forecast for its automotive division, predicting that its total car delivery in 2021 will be roughly the same as in 2020 and will not rise significantly.

Earlier, Daimler's Mercedes-Benz brand was hit by the temporary shutdown of Malaysian semiconductor suppliers this quarter. Calenius said that the third quarter of this year seemed to be the quarter most affected by the chip shortage, and it was hoped that the situation would be alleviated in the fourth quarter, followed by a rebound in car deliveries.

Ford: Gunnar Herrmann, chairman of Ford's European board, is significantly more pessimistic than Daimler's CEO, arguing that the chip shortage could last until 2024. Of course, he added, "it's hard to tell exactly when this will end." At the same time, he also pointed out the market's view of the lack of core, saying that consumers generally believe that the popularity of electric vehicles has exacerbated the shortage of chips.

Tesla: coincidentally, in late July, Tesla CEO Elon Musk also spoke on the chip shortage, saying that chip supply is the decisive factor affecting the company's electric car production, because it is uncontrollable. It is difficult to predict how long this situation will last in the future.

Renault: Renault CEO Luca de Meo also lamented that the supply shortage this quarter was more severe than expected. But despite its poor prospects, the broken chip is expected to improve in the fourth quarter. In terms of car production, Renault still sticks to its previous forecast and expects to cut production by 200000 vehicles in 2021.

BMW: BMW CEO Oliver Zipse had expected supply chain shortages to persist for the next six to 12 months. However, in the medium to long term, the problems of the supply chain are not unsolvable. After all, the automotive industry is very attractive to chipmakers, and the value it can provide to chipmakers is immeasurable.

It should be noted that due to negative factors such as supply chain shortages and the further intensification of the chip crisis, the German auto industry climate index fell to 28.8 points from 56.4 points in August, a month-on-month drop of nearly 30 points, the lowest since April. Fortunately, overall, German carmakers' expected production still improved in August.

However, looking at Europe as a whole, according to AFS's latest forecast, the European market is expected to lose 2.5 million vehicles before the chip crisis is over, 218000 more than its forecast the week before, which seems to indicate that the current global core shortage is more serious than in the past. Of course, while raising the car loss data for the European market, AFS also raised the figure for North America by 117000 to 2.6 million vehicles from the previous forecast.

In addition, according to a survey released by Silf and the Bank of Sweden on August 30th, supply disruptions have affected 70 per cent of Swedish manufacturing companies, and 16 per cent have cut their production plans for the next six months because of parts shortages.

AFS even made a bold prediction, predicting that at the end of the chip crisis, global car production will be reduced by a total of 8.547 million.

Focusing on the Chinese automobile market, Chen Shihua, deputy secretary general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, said on September 8 that the shortage of chips may lead to a reduction of 50 to 700000 vehicles in the domestic automobile market in August. Domestic car sales in the third and fourth quarters are very likely to show negative growth compared with the same period last year, but it is expected that the cumulative domestic car sales in 2021 will still increase on the basis of 2020.

Auto companies' countermeasures:

In order to cope with the lack of cores, there is no shortage of companies in the market that are "looking for a way to survive." on September 7, foreign media reported that South Korea's Hyundai plans to use internally developed car chips on a new car to be launched in 2022. The report also mentioned that people in the industry have revealed that Hyundai plans to develop power chips based on silicon carbide technology internally. It is reported that the chip design process is led by Hyundai Automotive Research Center and its auto parts subsidiary Hyundai Mobis, and works with a number of companies, including system chip maker Magnachip Semiconductor.

On Sept. 8, according to the latest news from foreign media, Tesla will also use silicon carbide in his Model 3 model, which is expected to make Tesla one of the automakers to approve the use of silicon carbide (SiC) chips in mass-produced vehicles.

It is understood that compared with traditional silicon wafers, the stability and other special properties of silicon carbide reduce its loss by more than half compared with traditional silicon wafers, and its good at heat dissipation can also pave the way for small frequency converters to achieve real "streamlined design."

Prior to this, Yuan Chengyin, director and general manager of the National New Energy vehicle Technology Innovation Center and secretary general of the China Automotive Chip Industry Innovation Strategic Alliance, made it clear that at present, there is still a certain gap in the key technologies of domestic enterprises in automotive chips. the rise of domestic automotive chips in the future needs to rely on the dual upgrading of research and development and manufacturing to encourage domestic enterprises to actively invest in research and development and get rid of their heavy dependence on overseas enterprises as soon as possible.

According to the latest August passenger car sales figures released recently, narrow passenger car wholesale sales in August were 1.512 million, down 12.9% from a year earlier. Among them, the shortage of chips is one of the reasons for the decline in sales. In August, the epidemic in Malaysia led to the suspension of production by some chip companies, which in turn affected the production and wholesale of domestic passenger cars. As the epidemic in Southeast Asia was brought under control, chip companies gradually resumed production. It is expected that the chip supply end will improve in September, and industry production and sales are expected to improve.

The chip factory moves frequently:

Intel: plans to invest up to 80 billion euros in the next 10 years to increase European chip production capacity

On Sept. 7, Intel said it would invest up to 80 billion euros in Europe to increase its chip production capacity over the next 10 years, and decided to open its semiconductor plant in Ireland to carmakers. As a world-renowned chipmaker, Intel's move is of great significance to the semiconductor industry. Intel CEO Pat Kissinger said it would announce the location of two major new chip manufacturing plants in Europe by the end of the year.

BYD: BYD Semiconductor sets up a new company with a registered capital of 4.9 billion

Jinan BYD Semiconductor Co., Ltd. was established on August 24, with a registered capital of 4.9 billion. Its business scope includes manufacturing and sales of semiconductor discrete devices, manufacturing of electronic components, design and service of integrated circuit chips, manufacturing and sales of semiconductor lighting devices, etc. The establishment of the company, for BYD, which already has the ability of chip self-research, can be said to be a signal to expand its production capacity.

TSMC: greatly increase the production capacity of chips such as automobiles

Previously, due to a serious shortage of chips in the automotive industry, TSMC also made a decision to significantly increase the production capacity of automotive chips, but to some extent led to a month-on-month decline in revenue. Subsequently, TSMC was the first to raise the price of automotive chips such as 28nm, and then announced that it would shelve the price increase, eventually reducing the OEM price of 28nm chips.

Qualcomm:

Previously, Qualcomm has reached cooperation agreements with a number of car companies, including GM and France's Renault, and at the IAA auto show in Munich, Qualcomm said that Qualcomm is willing to work with European chip foundry if the incentive program to increase European automotive chip production can attract suitable partners.

In addition to the above-mentioned enterprises, Samsung, Nvidia and other chip manufacturers have long aimed at the automotive chip field, it is not difficult to guess that the future chip market will show a "fairy fight" grand occasion. There is no doubt that with the vigorous development of new energy vehicles, the high-profile demeanor of the chip field continues.

However, according to the latest news on September 9, chip supply is expected to face a new round of pressure as Malaysian test companies shut down production for a week due to the epidemic. It is reported that three employees of Malaysian semiconductor company Unisem Bhd recently died of infection with novel coronavirus, and the company decided to close its factory in Ipoh, Perak, by Sept. 15, in order to contain the spread of the epidemic. At a time when the epidemic is still not under effective control, the future of the chip industry is still uncertain.