According to relevant industry reports, China's new energy vehicles are expected to reach 6-7 million in 2025, and it is estimated that China's new energy vehicle semiconductor market is expected to reach 6.28 billion-732 billion US dollars in 2025. Industry insiders also revealed that in the field of semiconductors, the demand for semiconductors in electric vehicles will increase by 5-10 compared with the demand for semiconductors in traditional vehicles.
The rapid increase in demand for automotive semiconductors has caused the total price of a single car to use semiconductor chips to rise. According to relevant research reports, the average chip value of a single car is currently $350. The chip value of pure electric vehicles can reach 770 US dollars, and the value of high-end electric vehicles can exceed 1500 US dollars.
Under such strong demand, what kinds of semiconductors can benefit from this wave of new energy vehicle development?
According to the relevant report of the Open Source Securities Research Institute, the current specific application areas of semiconductors in smart cars can be divided into five major categories.
1、Calculation and control chip
This type of chip is mainly based on microcontrollers and logic ICs, which are mainly used for calculation analysis and decision-making, and are divided into main control chips and auxiliary chips.
Among them, MCU is particularly important. At the end of 2020, the first chip shortage in the automotive industry is also MCU chips, and the current supply of this chip is still tight. The intelligentization of automobiles has also put forward higher performance requirements for the performance of automotive-regulated MCUs. 32-bit car-regulated MCUs are welcomed by the market. According to IHS data, the global market for automotive-grade MCUs will reach 7.35 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, of which 32-bit MCUs will account for 76.6%.
In the automotive-regulated MCU market, chip giants such as NXP, Infineon, Renesas Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, Bosch, ON Semiconductor, and Microchip Technology account for 63% of the global automotive-regulated semiconductor market.
2、Memory chip
Memory chips are mainly used for data storage functions, including DRAM (dynamic memory), SRAM (static memory), FLASH (flash memory chip), etc. Car storage giants include Samsung and SK Hynix.
3、Sensor chip
Vehicle gauge sensors are mainly used to detect and sense external signals, physical conditions or chemical composition, and convert the detected information into electrical signals or other required forms to transmit to other devices. It includes CIS, MEMS, current sensor, magnetic sensor, gyroscope, VCSEL chip and SPAD chip (for lidar).
In the category of automotive sensors, sensors can be divided into traditional sensors and smart sensors according to their different mechanisms and purposes. Traditional sensors are used as car neurons to control the various systems of the car. Common types are: pressure sensors, position sensors, temperature sensors, etc.; smart sensors are the core of autonomous driving. The sensors currently used for autonomous driving environment perception mainly include: millimeter-wave radar, lidar, ultrasonic radar, and vehicle-mounted cameras.
Due to the variety of sensors involved, there are many chip brands in this category, including Sekonix, kantatsu, fujifilm, ON Semiconductor, Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Bosch, etc.
4、Communication chip
Communication chips are mainly used to send, receive and transmit communication signals, including baseband chips, radio frequency chips, channel chips, power line carrier communication chips, and so on. In this field, there are leading companies such as Qualcomm, Huawei, and Broadcom.
5、Energy supply chip
Mainly used to ensure and regulate energy transmission, mainly discrete devices. Specifically, it includes power management chips, transistors (IGBT, MOSFET, etc.), etc. Such chip global giants include Infineon, Mason Microelectronics, ON Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics, Rohm, Vishay, etc.
