The New Energy Vehicle Market is Booming, and the Third Generation Semiconductor Accelerates to Follow Up

Since 2023, the development of the third-generation semiconductor market has further increased. With frequent cooperation among enterprises in the industry, the expansion of production has also continued. After INFINEON announcement of the acquisition of Canadian Gallium Nitride Systems in March, SANAN Optoelectronics also announced a joint venture with STMICROELECTRONICS to build a silicon carbide plant in early June. As two mature application materials in the third and a half generation of industries, silicon carbide and gallium nitride have gained broad markets in diversified application scenarios with the advantages of high frequency, high power and low loss, and one of the most eye-catching application fields is new energy vehicles.

At the recent 2023 TRENDFORCE Third Generation Semiconductor Frontier Trend Seminar, Gong Ruijiao, an analyst at TRENDFORCE, said: "The development of silicon carbide market has been strongly driven by the new energy industry, especially the vigorous development of new energy vehicles, which has driven the silicon carbide industry to take off. The prospect of gallium nitride in the automobile market is also very good. Many OEMs and Tier1 are very optimistic about the application of gallium nitride in the automobile market, but it still needs the joint efforts of the industry to promote its development. "

Figure1: power component

It is predicted that driven by downstream applications and markets, the market size of silicon carbide power components will grow from 1.61 billion US dollars in 2022 to 5.33 billion US dollars in 2026, with a compound growth rate of 35%; The market size of gallium nitride power components will grow from 180 million US dollars in 2022 to 1.33 billion US dollars in 2026, with a compound growth rate of 65%.

Among them, new energy vehicles are the application scenarios with the highest proportion at present. According to CASA Research data, in the domestic silicon carbide and gallium nitride power electronic device market in 2022, the scale of new energy vehicles accounts for 65%, followed by fast charging power supply, consumer power supply, industrial and commercial power supply, photovoltaic and energy storage, etc. With the increasing penetration rate of new energy vehicles, the third generations semiconductors are accelerating follow up this trend, and all enterprises are looking forward to seizing this important development trend and occupying market share.

The compound annual growth rate of silicon carbide power components for vehicles reaches 38%

At present, silicon carbide is still in iterative development, but it has many applications in the automotive field and is still growing rapidly. Gong Ruijiao pointed out that it is estimated that the market of automotive silicon carbide power components will grow from US $1.09 billion in 2022 to US $3.98 billion in 2026, with a compound growth rate of 38%.

Talking about the application of silicon carbide in the field of new energy vehicles, Wang Yazhe, senior director of ACCOPOWER, said: "In electric vehicles, the main application scenarios of SiC devices include OBC (on-board charger), on-board air conditioner and main drive inverter. In view of the requirements of small size, lightweight, high efficiency and high reliability, OBC application can better present the value of SiC. " He also mentioned that with the acceleration of electric vehicle architecture turn to 800V voltage, the traditional silicon-based power device scheme can hardly meet the energy consumption requirements of pure trams, and silicon carbide MOSFET will become the preferred scheme for electric air conditioner compressor controller. At the same time, silicon carbide MOSFET is used in the main inverter, which helps to improve the overall efficiency of 800V platform vehicles by 6%-8%.

However, domestic silicon carbide MOSFET products are still in the initial stage of development, and there is still a clear gap with the international leading level. At present, domestic manufacturers are constantly improving the yield and productivity of silicon carbide MOSFET devices. On the other hand, overseas manufacturers are also continuously expanding their production capacity. For example, STMICROELECTRONICS recently cooperated with SANAN Optoelectronics to build an 8-inch silicon carbide production line in Chongqing. SANAN Optoelectronics has the first vertically integrated semiconductor product line in China, and is also actively expanding its automobile customers.

Figure2: product of silicon carbide

It is worth noting that head car companies are investing heavily in silicon carbide supply chain or seeking diversified supplier systems. Traditional silicon-based power semiconductor manufacturers, such as CRRC and BYD, are gradually entering the silicon carbide market. Internationally, Tesla, the leader of new energy vehicles, announced that the next generation platform will reduce the consumption of silicon carbide by 75%, which put a premium on the market. Gong Ruijiao analyzed: "At present, the event has little impact. Tesla's claim to reduce the amount of silicon carbide may be achieved through technical update or other solutions, such as converting silicon carbide devices from planar to trench, or adopting silicon carbide devices and silicon-based IGBT. Co-packaging scheme, etc., to achieve its expectations."

Tesla's technology research and development to reduce the application cost of silicon carbide will also cause greater price competition pressure on domestic new energy vehicle brands, forcing domestic new energy vehicle enterprises to find alternatives to reduce costs, which is also an innovative opportunity for domestic silicon carbide enterprises to quickly keep up with the development level of international silicon carbide industry.

Gallium nitride is in the verification stage.

Compared with silicon carbide, the application of gallium nitride in the field of new energy vehicles is still limited at present. Gong Ruijiao said that the automobile application of gallium nitride is still at an early stage. He further said: "The gallium nitride market is mainly driven by consumer electronics, and the core comes from fast charging. Other consumption scenarios include audio, wireless charging, power supply and consumer products, etc. At the same time, however, many manufacturers have already turned their attention to industrial markets such as data centers, renewable energy and new energy vehicles, and a large number of manufacturers continue to research and develop in this area. "

However, the process of changing gallium nitride from low-power consumer electronics market to high-power industrial market has actually begun. Zou Yanbo, product application director of INNOSCIENCE, said that in high-power data centers, photovoltaic inverters, automobiles, communication power supplies and other markets, these applications put forward higher requirements for power density, energy efficiency, switching frequency, thermal management, reliability and size. Gallium nitride has the advantages of wide band gap, high frequency, low loss and strong radiation resistance, which just meets the requirements of high efficiency, low energy consumption and high costs performance in various application scenarios.

Figure3: Gallium carbide chip

"When everyone talked about gallium nitride three years ago, the general idea was that the performance was OK, but the price was a bit expensive. At that time, most customers would consider pre-research or high-end projects, and they were conservative and cautious for large-scale projects." Zou Yanbo recalled, “Nowadays, the industry has undergone great changes, and the performance of gallium nitride has been greatly improved. With the iteration of technology, the cost is not much different from the cost of silicon devices, and the application ecology is gradually improved." In his view, the era of gallium nitride has arrived, and he is ready to soar. At present, in the fields of consumption, industry (data center, energy storage) and automobile, the head customers are adopting INNOSCIENCE products, and the first mass production in the automobile field is radar products.

In addition to vehicle-mounted radar, some manufacturers are committed to developing gallium nitride power components for automobile main inverters, but on the whole, they have not realized a large number of applications in the automobile field. Gong Ruijiao said that it is estimated that by 2025, gallium nitride power components will penetrate into low-power OBC and DC-DC in small range, and as far as 2030, OEM will consider moving gallium nitride into inverters.

He also pointed out that after gallium nitride develops to a certain extent, it may compete with silicon carbide material in the application of on-board charger in 400V system. However, due to the limitation of gallium nitride material in high voltage, there should be no competition in 800V system field in short term. After the application scenarios of the third generations semiconductors in the field of new energy vehicles are more mature and diversified, whether there will be more intense market competition needs further observation.

The New Energy Vehicle Market is Booming, and the Third Generation Semiconductor Accelerates to Follow Up-China exportsemi.com