This year, the demand in the consumer electronics market has been weak, and major manufacturers have turned their production capacity to more popular automotive chips.
Prior to this, the automotive industry was also in a situation of reducing production and shutting down production due to a global chip shortage. The latest data from the auto industry analysis company AFS shows that the global auto market has reduced production by about 2.8102 million units this year. Global automakers are expected to cut production by 3.6806 million vehicles by the end of this year.
Now that major manufacturers have joined the production ranks of automotive chips, does it mean that automotive chips are no longer in short supply? Although the supply of some chips is gradually on the right track, the entire automotive chip market is shifting towards a structural shortage.
Automotive IGBT in Shortage
Automotive chips include Microcontroller, AI chip, IGBT, analog chip, sensor, memory, etc. Among them, MCU has been the focus of attention in the semiconductor industry in the past two years due to the chip shortage. The good news is that the current supply shortage of MCU has eased somewhat. But the focus of the chip shortage has turn to IGBTs.
With the popularity of new energy vehicles, despite the year-on-year decline in vehicle sales, EV sales have grown significantly year-on-year. Compared with traditional fuel vehicles, new energy vehicles have much more demand for chips. In addition, automotive-grade chips require higher safety and stability, long research and development cycles, high technical thresholds, and large capital investment, making the demand for automotive chips and the trend of automotive production seriously mismatched.
IGBT Find Usage at Energy Vehicle
The electrical characteristics of new energy vehicles are more obvious, and there is more demand for power devices. Chi Xiannian, the senior consultant of CCID Consulting Integrated Circuit Center, said that due to the intelligent development of new energy vehicles and automobiles, the automotive chip market has maintained a strong demand for the past two years. Among IGBT, which is the core component of new energy vehicles, is one of the most in short supply products.
IGBT is the most mature and widely used power device among high-power switching components. IGBT is an insulated gate bipolar transistor, which is a composite fully controlled voltage-driven power semiconductor device composed of BJT and MOS. As the core device for energy conversion and transmission, IGBT has the characteristics of fast switching speed and high current carrying density and is widely used in rail transit, smart grid, aerospace, electric vehicles, and new energy equipment.
As the trend of vehicle electrification accelerates, the supply of automotive power devices will not be able to meet the substantial increase in demand.
Leading manufacturers of power devices include Infineon, STMicroelectronics, onsemi, and Renesas. Although major manufacturers are actively expanding the production of power semiconductors, the delivery cycle of IGBTs has not returned to normal. At present, the delivery cycle of Infineon IGBT is about 50 weeks or even more.
Vehicle-regulated power devices play a major role in charge-discharge modules and battery, electronic control, and electric drive systems. Its production cycle is long, it is difficult to expand production, and more importantly, the process of such devices is relatively backward. At present, the production efficiency, cost, and degree of automation of the 8-inch line are not as good as those of the 12-inch line, so fabs and manufacturers are reluctant to invest too many resources.
Silicon carbide power devices are also components that play a role in new energy vehicles and can be used to alleviate the shortage of power semiconductors. However, the current price of silicon carbide is relatively high, and the process is also unstable. It may take time to achieve effective mitigation. But this is also a method. The new power of silicon carbide has gradually risen. With the maturity of the technology and its successful production and use, it will help alleviate the problem of insufficient supply of automotive-grade power devices to a certain extent.