According to CCTV, at the beginning of this year, the price of L9369, a core chip of the car body electronic stability system produced by Italian French Semiconductor, in the SEG electronic market in Huangpu District, Shanghai, was only about 20 yuan, which has soared more than 100 times, and some were also speculated to 2800 yuan, up 140 times.
The financial channel of CCTV pointed out that according to public data, a traditional fuel vehicle needs about 300 chips, a traditional fuel vehicle with intelligent configuration needs about 500 to 700 chips, and an intelligent electric vehicle may need more than 2000 chips. The industry estimates that by 2030, the proportion of car chips in vehicle costs will increase from 4% to 20%.
It is an urgent problem that the automobile factory cannot deliver due to the shortage of chips. In the parking lot outside the Ford automobile factory in the United States, hundreds of new cars are forced to idle here, which is due to the lack of chips. In order to solve this problem and enable customers to use cars as soon as possible, Ford has announced that it will sell "semi-finished" vehicles that lack some non safety critical function chips, and promised to reissue the chips to dealers one year later to help them install them on customers' cars.
The report said that Daimler, Volkswagen and Tesla had publicly stated that they could not guarantee the complete configuration of new vehicles due to lack of chips. BMW has cancelled the touch function of the central information display of many models; General Motors will temporarily give up the seat heating function.
According to statistics, due to the shortage of chips, about 96300 cars were forced to reduce production globally last week, more than 80% of which came from the European market, and about 14200 cars were reduced in the North American market. Up to now, the global production has been reduced by about 1.25 million vehicles in 2022.
According to the report, the problems of domestic automobile factories are also very serious, and the bosses of automobile enterprises are almost "thirsty for chips". A few days ago, Xia Yiping, CEO of Chidu Automobile, said that he searched for chips on the mainland and even around the world every day. Chen Yudong, president of Bosch China, also released a photo on social media. He sat at the office door with executives from Great Wall and Geely to show their determination to seek chips. Xiaopeng Automobile is also anxious. Li Bin, CEO of Weilai Automobile, said that chips are a great challenge. The company will buy some chips in the spot market or by using substitute materials.
Industry insiders analyzed that there were multiple reasons for the shortage of chips. For example, in mid March, earthquakes occurred in succession on the east coast of Honshu, Japan, which led to the suspension of many chip factories, making the shortage of car chips even worse. In addition, the situation of the Russian Ukrainian war has also increased the uncertainty of chip production, partly because Ukraine's neon supply accounts for nearly 70% of the world's total, and neon is an important material needed in chip production.
According to foreign media reports, on March 29, European chip manufacturer Italy France Semiconductor announced that it would raise the prices of all its product lines in the second quarter of this year. Renesa Electronics, the world leader in automotive chips, raised the price of chips in January this year.
Recently, Samsung, Intel and TSMC have all announced a 100 billion dollar capacity expansion plan. The European Commission has officially announced the European Chip Act, which is expected to invest more than 45 billion euros to increase Europe's share in the global chip manufacturing market. American automobile companies have also expanded their cooperation with Korean chip manufacturers, and domestic automobile enterprises are also laying out their own chip supply chains.