Auto Chip Shortage Surpasses Expectation Global Auto Industry Stops Working Again

Global semiconductor supply is tight, the impact on automobile production is becoming more and more intense.

On March 26, Weilai said it would temporarily suspend production for five working days due to a shortage of chips. Weilai's delivery volume in the first quarter will therefore be affected.

According to the reporter's incomplete statistics of the 21st century economic report, since March, multinational automobile enterprises such as Volvo, GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda and Nissan have successively said that production plans of some factories have been suspended due to the shortage of semiconductor supply.

"After the public was affected at the end of last year, we have been mobilizing resources to ensure production. However, the problem of tight supply can not be fundamentally solved in the short term, and most car companies have been affected and have made some adjustments more or less. " On March 29, a car company insider told the reporter of the 21st century economic report.

According to the above-mentioned people, as the problem of chip shortage was exposed in December last year, although the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain have done a lot of things to solve the problem since then, it will take at least six months to see the effect, and the time for some chips to return to normal supply may be longer. In other words, it will not be relieved until the second half of the year at least.

The lack of "core" is spreading all over the world

In December last year, the German auto company Volkswagen Group, parts giant continental group and Bosch Group successively issued early warnings that the global shortage of automobile chips may affect automobile production. This includes the Chinese market, which has brought about demand growth as a result of market recovery. At that time, some factories and individual models of FAW Volkswagen and SAIC Volkswagen adjusted their production plans, reduced production shifts or suspended production for a short time.

The shortage of automobile chips has aroused the attention of the whole industry. Subsequently, a number of auto companies and parts companies said that in order to solve this problem, they had a close communication with semiconductor manufacturers to expand production capacity to cope with the sudden increase in supply and demand.

However, at that time, a number of parts companies had already issued early warning that, considering the normal delivery time of the semiconductor industry, the current supply shortage would be improved in 6-9 months. Therefore, the supply situation is expected to remain severe by 2021.

Judging from the process of the event, the first half of this year will be the most shortage period of semiconductors in the whole industry.

It is worth noting that in March this year, a series of uncertain events, such as the earthquake in Japan, the cold wave in the United States, and the fire in Renesas, a semiconductor manufacturer, exacerbated the shortage of automobile chips, which led to a large-scale production suspension of automobile enterprises, which affected production.

On March 17, Volvo said it would shut down factories in the United States and China (Charleston, Chengdu, Daqing and Luqiao) for about two weeks.

After that, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, GM and other auto companies in Europe and North America also announced the suspension of production.

The crisis has spread from multinational automobile enterprise groups to new automobile manufacturing forces. In terms of scale, there is an obvious gap between the production and marketing scale of Weilai and the multinational automobile enterprises, so the total demand for chips is actually less than that of other automobile enterprises.

Some industry insiders told reporters of the 21st century economic report that the supply of chips is more tense than expected.

"In fact, there was a certain degree of chip shortage or surplus every year before, because the management and prediction of long-term capacity has always been a challenge. But now many automobile enterprises have been in contradiction with lean production, production capacity management or inventory management. " Some auto parts enterprises told reporters of the 21st century economic report.

He believes that since the epidemic last year affected people's judgment, and China's auto market is better than expected, this contradiction is more obvious.

It is worth noting that as the shortage of industrial chips has not been solved in a short time, more and more automobile enterprises will be affected by the third quarter. Even if some factories have reduced production, it is difficult to avoid another supply shortage. It will still take a long time for chips to return to normal supply.

The shortage of chips has undoubtedly had a substantial impact on the performance of auto companies.

At the annual meeting of the group on March 16, VW Group CEO DIDEs said that the shortage of chips in the first two months of this year had led to a reduction of 100000 vehicles worldwide.

Weilai will stop production for five days, which will also lower its first quarter delivery than expected.

It is worth noting that Weilai automobile is in the upward trend at present. In February, Weilai delivered a total of 5578 new cars, up 689% year-on-year and down 22.8% month on month. Among them, 1327 were delivered by es8, 2216 by ES6 and 2035 by ec6. In the first two months of this year, Weilai delivered 12803 vehicles.

According to the previous forecast of Weilai, Weilai could have delivered more than 20000 vehicles in a single quarter for the first time in the first three months. In the case of no other important new cars launched this year, the current shutdown will bring a more serious crisis to Weilai.

From the industry as a whole, although the impact of chip shortage is expected to improve in the third quarter, the continuous shortage of supply is bound to affect the sales of global automobile industry this year.

Supply chain security problems to be solved

With the development of automobile intelligence, the number of chips required by automobile is also growing rapidly.

"For many vehicles, the number of chips or electronic components required on bicycles has increased significantly due to the functions of driving assistance and intelligent Internet connection, which is also an important reason for the shortage of chips. In other words, in the future, the demand for chips in the whole automobile industry will be further expanded. " A senior management of an auto parts company told reporters of the 21st century economic report.

In fact, from the perspective of the development of the whole industry, the competitive core of the future automobile will be the electric technology and scientific and technological strength. The chip is undoubtedly the most critical "neck clamping" technology.

Relevant departments have begun to pay attention to the shortage of chips.

Since this year, the Ministry of industry and information technology has launched many symposiums on the supply and demand of automotive semiconductors. On March 24, the Ministry of industry and information technology once again held a seminar on the supply of automobile chips. Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of the Ministry of industry and information technology, said that the recent shortage of automobile chip supply is not only a global common problem, but also reflects the deep-seated contradiction of China's lack of independent supply capacity. It is necessary to strengthen analysis, research and judgment, and seriously study and solve it.

"Automobile chip is an important device related to the core competitiveness of the industry, and is the key foundation for the construction of a powerful automobile country. We need to coordinate development and safety, adhere to the combination of long-term and near-term, and promote systematically, improve the level of the whole industrial chain, and strongly support the high-quality development of automobile and semiconductor industries." Said Xin Guobin.

Focusing on the current supply problem, we should strengthen the coordination and linkage of all parties, realize information exchange and sharing, fully tap the potential of existing chips and existing capacity resources, optimize the vehicle production scheduling plan, and strive to ensure the stable and healthy operation of the industry.

At the same time, it is also necessary to step up the long-term strategic layout, coordinate the development needs of traditional vehicle chips, electrification, networking and intelligence, strengthen the application traction and whole machine driving, strengthen the key technology research, improve the technical standards and specifications, improve the testing and verification ability, and promote the safe and stable development of the supply chain of the industrial chain.

During the two sessions of the National People's Congress in 2021, suggestions on solving the shortage of chip supply and promoting the industrialization of domestic chips have also appeared in the motions and proposals of a number of automobile industry representatives. These suggestions focus on increasing the support of policies and funds, speeding up the formulation and promulgation of standards, and promoting the integration of host plants and chip enterprises.

Some analysts pointed out that although the domestic car chip enterprises started late, the automotive intelligent chips are different from the traditional chips. AI chips are driven by scenes, data and algorithms, and need collaborative optimization of algorithms and hardware design. Local chips have a large space for development in the future.