Summary:
In the past two years, the security issues of the automobile industry chain and supply chain have attracted unprecedented attention from the entire industry. Entering the era of smart cars, one of the core technologies of "vehicle chips" and "auto software" is "hard" and "soft", and the import rate of one is 90%. The epidemic has "taught a lesson" to the auto industry in three years ; 85% of the domestic market is occupied by foreign software suppliers, which has attracted great attention from the whole industry.
Model innovation to build the "strongest brain" in the automotive industry
Recently, Li Xiang, the founder, chairman and CEO of Ideal Auto, posted on Weibo, saying that they are proud of using a large number of local Chinese suppliers. It is understood that the localization rate of Ideal L series automotive chips has exceeded 25%.
The "core shortage" problem that broke out since the end of 2020 has been ringing, urging the localization of automotive chips to accelerate. Li Xiang's pride, in a sense, is also a microcosm of the acceleration of the process.
At present, under the wave of electrification and intelligence, a new round of competition in the automotive field is in full swing, and the industry ecology and core supply chain structure are being restructured at an accelerated pace. Among them, the chip as the "brain" of the car is a major hurdle in front of the industry. Data show that in the past three years, the shortage of chips has reduced global car production by about 15 million vehicles, of which China accounted for 2 million vehicles.
It takes about 500 chips to produce a fuel car, and about 3,000 chips to produce a smart electric car, which is 6 times that of a fuel car. With the continuous expansion of the production scale of new energy smart vehicles, the demand for my country's automotive chips will experience explosive growth in the next few years, or will reach 100 billion to 120 billion chips per year. However, the current self-sufficiency rate of domestic automotive chips is less than 10% (the self-sufficiency rate of some high-end smart chips is even less than 1%), and more than 90% of chips rely on imports.
The complex and severe international environment reminds China's auto industry all the time. Following the United States and the Netherlands, in May this year, the Japanese government also began to "strengthen the export control of chip manufacturing equipment", officially joining the queue to block China's semiconductor chip industry. Only by mastering the key core technology of chip manufacturing in our own hands, can my country's auto industry completely get rid of the status quo of being "stuck".
In the era of smart cars, the demand for automotive chips is still increasing. Domestic substitution is the general trend, and domestic chip manufacturers are seizing the opportunity to take advantage of the trend.
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In recent years, my country has built some fabs to increase the production capacity of automotive-grade chips. At the same time, many companies have begun to invest heavily in chip R&D and production. Good news about domestic chips continues to come. Especially during this year's Shanghai Auto Show, domestic chip companies such as Horizon, Black Sesame Smart, and Xinchi Technology shined brightly. New products were released one after another, and cooperation contracts were signed one after another. Tourstar Era ES, Dongfeng Fengshen eπ, Lynk & Co 08, Nezha GT, Hechuang V09, etc., have gradually become a long-term queue.
But it is undeniable that at present, my country's semiconductor industry is playing more of a substitute role for the chips of vehicle manufacturers, and some of the urgently needed high-end chips and system solutions are still concentrated in the hands of a few multinational companies.
In order to realize the safety of the overall supply chain of China's automotive chips, the industry needs to move from purely domestic substitution and providing system solutions based on domestic chips to a product-centered approach driven by industry solutions to create an internal cycle, and at the same time go deep into the international market. Cooperation to form a pattern of international and domestic dual cycles.
The first is to innovate the mode of collaborative cooperation between industries. In the current vehicle product supply chain, chip companies participate as Tier 2 and Tier 3, and the connection with car companies is relatively loose. It is recommended to promote the cooperation of the three major industrial clusters in top-level planning, and establish a number of major projects through key research projects, technology alliances, and industrial funds. , Cultivate a group of key enterprises, solve the bottleneck problems of software products such as vehicle operating systems, algorithms, tool chains, and key controllers, and turn linear competitiveness into ecological competitiveness.
The second is to create a new collaborative model between the government and the industry. In the process of upgrading the entire industry, the government has shifted from a management function to a service function to solve the problems encountered by the industry. For example, strengthen policy guidance, establish unified technical specifications and standards for automotive-grade chips, formulate an outline for the development of domestic automotive chip technology, and accelerate the layout of the overall industrial chain of automotive chips; ensure stable supply, guide foreign automotive chip companies to invest in China, and establish Chip and important raw material emergency reserve mechanism; stabilize the market, strengthen law enforcement and supervision, regulate the disorderly rise of raw material prices, and ease the pressure on enterprises; build a good policy and market environment, and establish a guarantee mechanism for enterprise research and development.
The third is to strengthen more in-depth international cooperation. International cooperation can complement each other, improve total factor productivity, and establish a new sustainable global automotive supply chain system. China will also promote the development of the global auto chip industry with a higher level of openness and a larger auto market, and contribute China's strength to the construction of the global auto chip industry ecology.
"Software and hardware" synergy to jointly build a new ecosystem of automotive software
A chip without a software ecosystem is doomed to be a body without a soul.
At the 12th China Auto Forum, Yu Kai, the founder and CEO of Horizon, pointed out that in the era of software-defined cars, it is important to break through the chip neck technology, but at the same time, the importance of software cannot be ignored. The core of the differentiated competitiveness of smart cars will definitely focus on software.
As cars shift from vehicles to smart mobile terminals, based on usage scenarios, the car software is run through the car operating system to realize related functions and services, optimize the car experience, expand the value boundary of cars, and the value of the car industry and products will move backward to the application side. In addition, OTA technology can be used to ensure that vehicles are always new. For example, through software updates, car companies can easily add new features, fix bugs, and improve performance to vehicles, bringing better user experience and longer vehicle life to car owners. At the same time, through software control, the car can better understand and adapt to the driving environment, realizing automatic driving and intelligent interaction. For example, through deep learning and artificial intelligence technology, software-defined cars can realize functions such as automatic parking, lane keeping, and traffic signal recognition to improve driving safety and convenience. The value of automotive software is rapidly increasing and has become a key area of competition for companies.
To realize software-defined cars, two links are crucial. One is the coordinated development of software and hardware, and the other is to build a software ecosystem to realize the independent control of the supply chain.
However, in terms of automotive basic software, foreign automotive software suppliers occupy more than 85% of the domestic market, and it is difficult for domestic companies to compete with foreign companies in terms of overall market share. The progress of AUTOSAR AP architecture ecological construction is not yet obvious.
Industry experts pointed out that while maintaining cooperation with foreign software suppliers, the domestic industry should seize the opportunity to build a domestic standard system and accelerate the establishment of China's independent industrial ecology and technology research and development to ensure the safety, stability and controllability of the industrial chain and supply chain.
As a bridge connecting the software and hardware of the car, the automotive operating system supports the development of applications on the upper side and mobilizes hardware resources on the lower side. Basic software is the foundation of product design and the key to intelligence.
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my country attaches great importance to the research and development and industrialization of operating systems, and has issued a series of policies, requiring "speeding up the development and application of automotive operating systems, and persisting in the collaborative research of software and hardware."
On May 27, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (hereinafter referred to as "CAAM") officially released the first microkernel open source project in the China Automotive Operating System Open Source Project. According to Wang Yao, Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Technology Department of the China Automobile Association, the plan aims to gradually develop a new generation of autonomous vehicles with "roots" in China through the open source of the underlying original technology, co-construction, sharing, and co-governance with the industry. Use the operating system.
Industry experts pointed out that a unified automotive operating system standard still needs to be formulated to ensure interoperability and compatibility between different models and manufacturers; companies can also open source codes to promote the construction of automotive operating systems and allow developers to participate together And contribute code to improve the security and stability of the system; the construction of an automotive operating system also requires cross-industry cooperation, including cooperation between automakers, software development companies, chip manufacturers, and other technology providers. Innovation in automotive operating systems can only be possible if an open collaboration platform and ecosystem is established to facilitate knowledge sharing and technology exchange.