April 22, 2021
1806
Recently, there has been a wave of cross-border car manufacturing. Mobile phone manufacturers such as OPPO, Huawei, Xiaomi, and other Internet manufacturers such as Baidu and Ali, and even real estate manufacturers such as Evergrande. Then the trend of car building is prevailing, and what impact will it have on the automotive chip supply chain? ?
Cars will use a lot of chips, and as cars become more and more intelligent, more chips are needed, including the main control chip MCU, power devices, various sensors, power management chips, memory chips, and so on.
For example, MCU needs to be used in many parts such as smart cockpit, car power supply and motor, car lighting, body control, etc., including car instrument communication assistance, TBOX car networking, HUD, air conditioning panel, BMS, electric vacuum pump control, electric water pump and oil pump control , Electric air-conditioning compressor motor control, automotive adaptive high beam system, adaptive low beam system, BCM, seat controller, door and window controller, automotive auxiliary system, etc.
The current global chip shortage has affected the automotive industry. Many car companies have announced suspension or reduction of production due to a lack of cores. Challenges and opportunities coexist. In the global automotive chip supply situation, many domestic car chips benefit from early deployment and Over the years of technology accumulation, they already have the ability to supply automotive chips. Driven by the dual situation of shortage and domestic substitution, these manufacturers have ushered in more opportunities to enter the supply chain of automotive manufacturers.
At the same time, various Internet companies and mobile phone manufacturers have cross-border "causes", such as Baidu, Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO, etc., bringing new dawn to domestic car chips, because traditional car manufacturers have become accustomed to using foreign car chips. Brand products, and new forces can try to adopt domestic automobile chip brands with sufficient technical strength, and the new trend of automobile intelligence and electrification also brings many opportunities for domestic automobile chips to enter the supply chain of automobile manufacturers.
For example, electronics enthusiasts saw many car chip manufacturers at the Shanghai Electronics Show in Munich last week, and they also got a general understanding of their products and solutions, as well as their current applications in automobiles. Some have actually achieved quite good results, such as Many of its 8-bit and 32-bit MCUs have passed the AEC-Q100 test, the car’s main control chip manufacturer Xinwangwei, and the number of automotive-grade MCUs may exceed 30 million at the beginning of the year. The products are already in Dongfeng, Geely, SAIC/GM , Changan, Shaanxi Automobile, Guangzhou Automobile and other corresponding auto parts manufacturers mass production and project development.
Another example is the sensor manufacturer Naxinwei. The company focused on displaying smart products in the field of automotive electronics at the exhibition. This company has already entered the automotive comprehension early. In 2017, it achieved mass crashes and brakes of pressure sensors on traditional fuel vehicles. Solutions such as pressure sensors, oil pressure sensors, and air-conditioning pressure sensors have also been successfully introduced in many popular models such as Dongfeng Motor, SAIC Maxus, and Shanghai Volkswagen.
There are still many domestic car chip manufacturers that have achieved certain results in the automotive field like this. Then mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi and OPPO have crossed the boundaries. Do these excellent domestic car chip manufacturers have a chance? The answer is possible, especially the cause. During a period of time, domestic car chip manufacturers will continue to grow, and most importantly, the creation of new forces will drive the enthusiasm of domestic chip manufacturers to make progress.
It is also worth noting that before OPPO, Xiaomi and other manufacturers had a large number of layouts in the chip field, they all invested in a lot of chip companies, and they have also successively developed their own chips.
For example, OPPO previously invested in a UWB chip design company Hanwei Microelectronics, which was established in 2019, led by a number of senior digital-analog mixed-signal design experts, focusing on the design and development of UWB chips and solutions. Chairman and CEO Dr. Zhang Yifeng believes that with smartphones as the center, IoT ecosystems including smart watches, smart speakers, smart homes, and new energy vehicles will be the main sources of UWB technology's explosive growth in the next few years. Application scenarios.
Although the company does not currently have products used in automobiles, the company expects that the first chip will be mass-produced in 2021, and it is unknown that it will actively deploy in the automotive field. After all, Dr. Zhang Yifeng is optimistic about the future UWB chips in new energy vehicles. Field of application.
Xiaomi has invested more in the chip field, involving MCUs, power devices, power chips, IoT chips and other fields. For example, the smart microelectronics it invested in has also performed well in the MCU field. According to the company’s official website, smart Micro is a domestic 32-bit Arm Cortex-M microcontroller chip and solution provider. After years of development and upgrades, the MM32 product series of Smart Microelectronics has been widely used in the sub-system of the car body.
It is conceivable that these chip manufacturers invested by OPPO and Xiaomi, especially those that have begun to deploy in the automotive field, are likely to benefit from OPPO and Xiaomi's car manufacturing in the future. However, the premise is that these manufacturers can finally successfully bring their own cars to the market. Although many engineers said that when using domestic chips for development, they will encounter many problems, and they also complain that some domestic chip products are far from the mainstream, but it is not difficult to see that the development of domestic chips in recent years has been Quite quickly, I believe it will get better and better in the future.
In addition to investing in chip manufacturers, Xiaomi and OPPO are also trying to develop their own chips. Of course, the current research and development are based on mobile phone applications. However, if the car really develops in the future, it is not unpredictable to start developing car chips by itself.
On the whole, new forces in car-making have entered the game across borders. In the short term, they will actually bring a lot of imagination to domestic car chip manufacturers. They will encourage domestic car chip manufacturers to actively invest in research and development, strive to enter the supply chain of newly created forces, and promote domestic cars. With the development of the chip industry, the supply pattern of the entire automotive chip industry is expected to change in the long run.
