After more than ten years of technical precipitation and product upgrading, BYD has become the only automobile company in China with a complete IGBT industry chain. In addition to auto chip giants such as Tesla and BYD, there are also a number of OEMs that are making strategic plans for their own chip research. In addition, the shortage of chips directly broke the balance of the global semiconductor industry chain, and OEMs are increasingly aware of the importance of mastering core technologies.

According to Cartner's forecast, due to the electrification of vehicles, the trend of automation is obvious, and the global chip supply problem is difficult to solve. By 2025 , 50% of the top ten OEMs will be conducting independent research and development. With the next round of "core making" for smartphone brands, OEMs seem to have set off another wave of self-developed chips. Some time ago, Geely Automobile's core technology announced the launch of its self-developed smart cockpit chip "Dragon Eagle No. 1", this chip is China's first 7nm process car. According to Geely's chip self-development plan, 5nm process integrated supercomputing platform chips and high computing power autonomous driving chips will also be launched later. The launch of Geely's self-developed chips has also raised a key question in the industry, that is, why do OEMs end up making chips one after another? Is the self-developed chip of the host factory really needed? What challenges will automakers face in making core components?

To understand these issues, we must first understand the development trend of the automotive market BAT54LPS-7. In recent years, the structure of automotive electronics and electrical appliances has been transformed and upgraded, and the "new four modernizations" of automobiles have continuously promoted the development of automotive-grade chips to larger capacity and lower power consumption, and "hardware preprocessing, software OTA" has also enabled "software OTA" become a consensus. At this stage, industry barriers in the automotive market are subverting, and functional boundaries are increasingly blurred. Various phenomena show that self-developed chips by OEMs seem to have become an imminent strategic choice.

The end is that the OEMs have made cores

Self-developed chips in factories are nothing new. In 2019, Tesla announced with a high profile that its self-developed FSD fully autonomous driving chip was mass-produced on the Model 3 in the same year. Since then, Tesla has moved completely away from Mobileye and Nvidia, taking the lead in chip freedom. Mobileye and Nvidia have been unable to meet Tesla's needs in terms of performance, computing power, R&D schedule, cost and power.

For BYD, its development of self-developed chips can be traced back to 2005. In order to lack the market of automotive standard IGBT modules, BYD started its own research and development layout. After more than ten years of technical precipitation and product upgrading, BYD has become the only automobile company in China with a complete IGBT industry chain. In 2018, after eleven years of hard work, BYD launched the first generation of 8-bit automotive MCU chips in the field of industrial-grade MCUs. Wang Chuanfu, founder of BYD, said the chip was man-made, not God. Facing the dilemma of the shortage of automotive chips, BYD is also expanding the production capacity of power semiconductors and laying out the field of silicon carbide.

In comparison, Geely and Leaprun are a little naive. Geely said that the Dragon Eagle One is expected to launch in 2022 -ic/" title="2022 model">2022-ic/" title="2022 model">2022-ic/" title="2022 model">2022-ic/" title="2022 Model">2022-ic/" title="2022 Model">2022-ic/" title="2022 Model">2022-ic/" title="2022 Model">2022-ic/" title= "2022 Model">2022-ic/" title="2022 Model">2022-ic/" title="2022 Model">2022-ic/" title="2022 Model">2022-ic/" title="2022 model">2022-ic/" title="2022 model">2022-ic/" title="2022 model">2022-ic/" title="2022 model">2022-ic/" title="2022 model" >2022-ic/" title="2022 model">2022-ic/" title="2022 model">2022-ic/" title="2022 model">2022 to achieve mass production. Continuously increase technology research and development and investment , to build an automobile industry ecology. Leapmotor, with its core strategy of global self-research and building a car with soul, officially released its vehicle-grade AI intelligent driving chip Lingxin 01 in 2020. It has fully independent intellectual property rights, and a single chip The computing power of the chip can reach 4.2TOPS.

In addition to auto chip giants such as Tesla and BYD, there are also a number of OEMs that are making strategic plans for their own chip research. According to 36 Krypton reports, Weilai is planning to independently develop self-driving computing chips. Driven by Li Bin, chairman and CEO of Weilai Automobile, the company is accelerating its own chip development. In 2021, Xpeng Motors will also invest in the research and development of autonomous driving hardware into the chip field. Volkswagen plans to design and develop the high-performance chips and necessary software in-house, Chief Executive Herbert Diess said. In order to reduce dependence on chip makers, Hyundai Motor Co. has plans to develop its own chips... said José Munoz, Hyundai Motor Co.'s global chief operating officer.

The main control factory needs to develop its own chips

With the gradual upgrade of the electrical structure of automobiles, the number and cost of chips carried by the automobile has increased, and the requirements for the computing power and performance of the chips have been increasing. Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess once said that the hardware and software of the car must be in their own hands.

In addition, the shortage of chips directly broke the balance of the global semiconductor industry chain, and OEMs are increasingly aware of the importance of mastering core technologies. Instead of considering whether the chips developed by the OEMs themselves are needed, it is better to say that this is a self-help after the main manufacturers have fully considered. In order to meet the market demand and remain invincible in the fierce competition, some OEMs have announced their own chip development routes, and other manufacturers have also increased investment, actively laid out the chip industry chain, and directly participated in chip definition and design.

At present, we are talking about the OEM's chip manufacturing, not the whole process of the OEM's chip manufacturing, from chip design to tape-out mass production, there are quite a few links in the middle. It is difficult to fully cover. In a short period of time, production is concentrated in manufacturing, and self-developed chips by OEMs do not seem to be the best solution to alleviate the shortage of chips. From a long-term perspective, it has become inevitable for upstream and downstream enterprises in the semiconductor industry chain to adjust the supply chain. For the OEMs themselves, self-developed chips are not only an opportunity, but also an opportunity to reshape the supply chain and seize the initiative. In addition, self-developed chips can also reduce car manufacturing costs and create unique performance for proprietary models of chips. How to look at it is a long-term positive move with huge room for growth.

Self-developed chips are difficult

It's one thing to take the initiative, but it's not so easy for OEMs to develop their own chips. The chip industry requires high investment and continuous investment, as well as long-term technology accumulation and talent training. First, the threshold for chip research and development is high, and there is a shortage of talents. When the OEM is a layman in chip research and development, it is inevitable to make detours. When a failure occurs, the OEM will face huge capital loss and market planning confusion, and the initial investment is not proportional to the return. Second, unlike consumer electronic products, automotive electronics have higher requirements for chip performance, power consumption, and reliability, and complete vehicle-level certification, which is also a barrier for many companies to overcome difficulties.

Furthermore, the trend of "software-defined cars" is obvious, and autonomous driving technology is ultimately characterized by software and algorithms, and the deep integration of software and hardware is the direction of the development of smart cars. The new four modernizations of sedans have brought significant changes to the industrial ecology. The current automobile market pays more attention to the integration and innovation of software and hardware, and the openness of the industrial chain and ecological chain. As the underlying core technologies, such as chips and algorithms, OEMs are gradually playing an important role, transforming and upgrading to technology-based enterprises covering chips, software, and the whole vehicle.