As the top priority of the semiconductor industry, chips are widely used in many industries. It can be said that chips have become an indispensable part of our human life. However, the haze of lack of cores has always loomed over the global automotive supply chain.
So, what kind of existence is the chip to the automobile industry? Today, let’s briefly discuss it together.
As we all know, automotive chips are the basis of automotive electronics. Usually, whether it is a fuel vehicle or an electric vehicle, the body will be equipped with hundreds or thousands of chips. Cars are inseparable from a variety of chips, ranging from tire pressure monitoring systems TMPS and cameras to vehicle controllers and autonomous driving domain controllers.
According to the different functions of automotive chips, they can be roughly divided into three categories: the first type of chips is responsible for computing power and processing; the second type of chips is responsible for power conversion; the third type is sensor chips.
In fact, the intelligence of the car is the intelligence of the chip. According to the requirements of different cars, it is divided into traditional models and smart models, and the number of chips required by them is also different. For example, traditional cars need 500-600 chips, and more advanced autonomous driving and new energy vehicles have more functional requirements, so they need more chips, about 1000-1200 chips. There are also some smart cars that require more chips.
Chips are used so much in cars, which is why the shortage of chips will have such a big impact on the auto industry, and even the entire world.
In fact, chips are also graded, with low-end, mid-range and high-end. Among them, the low-end needs to be said, the output is large, the process is simple, and there is basically no shortage. For example, high-end chips are mainly used in autonomous driving, smart cockpits and other places, and are basically only used in high-end car bodies, so the demand is not large.
However, some mid-range chips have low technical content and moderate prices, but they are always available for both low-end and high-end cars, and the demand is large and indispensable, which makes it easier to be out of stock. For example, an MCU is equivalent to the cerebellum that controls the functions of a car. The various subsystems of the car body, including fan control, air conditioning control, wipers, sunroofs, etc., all require MCU control. This means that if these MCU chips are missing, some very basic functions of the car cannot be applied, and a car will be built in vain.