In 2021, the market has smelled the business of automotive chips, stockpiling a lot of goods, when there is no shortage of chips, automakers and Tier 1 factories rarely go to the market to find goods, and excess has occurred.

For the spot market, automotive chips have indeed begun to "sell", but looking at the entire automotive chip industry, "excess" may only be relatively speaking.

From the overall demand point of view, whether it is traditional cars or new energy vehicles, with the development of automotive intelligent networking, the demand for chips has exploded.

In the "2023 China Automotive level chip Industry Innovation Research Report" released in August, the domestic industry research institute Billion Ou Think Tank proposed that by 2025, the average chip load of fuel vehicles will reach 1243, and the average chip load of intelligent electric vehicles will be as high as 2072. Foreign agencies predict that the average semiconductor cost per vehicle will rise from $700 in 2020 to $1,138 in 2028. ST forecasts that the automotive chip market will almost double in size by 2025 compared to 2021.

Observation of the first three quarters of this year's chip factory earnings, automotive chip factory life is also better than other original factories. Automotive giant On Mei in Q3 automotive business growth of 33% to set a new record, NXP despite inventory waiting to go, but automotive revenue is still growing, even the recent difficult TI, automotive business is still growing.

Therefore, for the upstream original factory, some of their "decline warning", more is compared with the abnormal growth rate of the previous two years, if the vision is relaxed, the demand for automotive chips is still relatively strong, and have to earn.

However, from the supply side, there are still some limitations in the supply of automotive chips.

According to the report of market research agency Yole, driven by new energy vehicles, energy storage and other applications, the global power semiconductor device market will grow from $17.5 billion in 2020 to $26.2 billion in 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 6.9%.

Big manufacturers have bet on automotive power devices, as the opening of the next semiconductor cycle. The production and verification cycle of automotive power devices is long, and most of them are produced in the relatively backward 8-inch production line, and it is difficult to expand production. Now the electrical characteristics of energy vehicles are more obvious, and once they cannot keep up with demand, they will jam the production of cars.

In addition, automotive chips are mainly supplied by European and American original factories. Relying on foreign supply chains sometimes also means increased risk, and a mistake at any one node can lead to a disconnection of the entire supply chain, causing problems in the supply of automotive chips. For example, when ST's Malaysia sealed test plant was closed, many domestic car companies suddenly had no "core" available.

Plus the automotive supply chain is long and complex. It typically takes six months or more for a chip to go from manufacturing, testing and packaging to delivery to an automaker's assembly line. Therefore, it usually takes a while for chip manufacturers to sense and adapt to changes in demand in the automotive market.

However, the characteristics of semiconductor manufacturing "long cycle" make it difficult to adjust production flexibly and timely, and it is difficult for foundry to reserve idle capacity for automotive applications, which is also the reason why the automotive chip gap is easy to enlarge.

Research published by Roland Berger, a consulting firm, shows that the chip shortage in 2021 has reached its peak in recent years, and then eased year by year.

Roland Berger expects that in 2023, the global automotive chip supply will still have 8% to 13% of the demand can not be met, and it is expected that by 2025 the total supply of automotive chips can reach 846 million, the demand shortage will shrink to -5%, and the phenomenon of automotive chip shortage will exist for a long time, but will gradually slow down.

When the car companies paid "high" tuition fees, no longer rely on a single supplier, but to find more alternative suppliers, everyone's acceptance of high-priced chips significantly reduced, but also one of the reasons for the continuous decline in spot prices of automotive chips, coupled with chip supply to keep up with demand, inventory rose to a high in the short term.

However, looking at the structural shortage of automotive chips in the long term, the risk factors of shortage are still there, but it is difficult to reach the level of comprehensive shortage.