Recently, hexiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng automobile, once again talked about the topic of "lack of core" in cars at the Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao auto show. He said that after borrowing the online Red "reachable duck" on the microblog to urgently ask for the chip, an organization contacted Xiaopeng automobile to offer help. At present, the two sides are in communication. However, some people took the opportunity to raise the chip price. For products costing only a few yuan, the other side offered several thousand yuan, and the chip price is still hundreds of times higher.
On May 26, hexiaopeng reported on his microblog that the problem of "lack of core" still exists. The absolute number of a smart car chip exceeds 5000, involving hundreds of types. Many of them are car specific chips, and most of them are cheap chips, not widely concerned or expensive chips.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, the chip supply chain has been repeatedly impacted. Coupled with the substantial increase in automotive demand for chips in the era of "new four modernizations", the "lack of core" has become the norm of the global automotive industry and one of the important problems restricting the development of the automotive industry.
It is common for the automobile industry to be forced to reduce or stop production due to "lack of core". A few days ago, Toyota Motor said that due to the shortage of semiconductors, the company cut its global production target in June by about 100000 to about 850000. According to the latest data of AFS, an auto industry data forecasting company, as of May 8, due to the shortage of chips, the global auto market has reduced the production of about 1693800 vehicles this year.
In the case of short supply, chip dealers took the opportunity to drive up prices for profits. Not only did hexiaopeng talk about the phenomenon that the price of automotive chips was fired up. Previously, yuchengdong, CEO of Huawei consumer business and CEO of smart car Bu, also publicly said that a chip with a market price of 10-20 yuan in the automotive industry has been fired to 2500 yuan, and a car needs to use nine such chips.
"The price increase is outrageous now." Xinmou research analyst Wanglifu told China business news. In addition, industry insiders also told reporters that many chip dealers rely on hoarding to achieve "sudden wealth". Even though the General Administration of market supervision and administration imposed administrative penalties on the three automobile chip distribution enterprises for driving up prices in September last year, this phenomenon could not be stopped.
Wang Lifu believes that the auto industry is obviously panicking about "lack of core", which can be seen from the backlog order data of Infineon, a "big manufacturer" of auto chip supply.
Helmut gassel, chief marketing officer of Infineon, said in a recent media interview that the backlog of orders in the first quarter of this year, including unconfirmed orders, has increased from 31billion euros in the fourth quarter of last year to 37billion euros, of which 75% of orders can be delivered in the next 12 months.
Infineon's backlog of orders increased by more than 19% in the first quarter of this year. Wang Lifu believes that the increase in this figure is due to the fact that there is indeed a lot of incremental demand for automotive chips on the one hand, and panic orders on the other hand. In fact, last year was the time when there was an overall shortage of consumer grade and automotive chips.
At present, in sharp contrast to the still shortage of automotive chips, the supply and demand of consumer chips has reached an inflection point. The demand for consumer electronics represented by mobile phones declined significantly. It was reported that MediaTek cut orders by more than 30% in the second half of the year. Qualcomm also reported that it would cut prices for sm8450 and sm8475 chips by 30%~40% to facilitate inventory clearance.
Wang Lifu said that this structural shortage may attract chip manufacturers to make flexible capacity and strategy adjustments. However, due to different security levels and reliability and other factors, it is difficult for the excess consumer chip capacity to quickly shift to automotive chip capacity. Therefore, the phenomenon of "core shortage" in automobiles will still exist in the short term.
Author / xiaoyisi