With the continuous development of intelligent and electrified vehicles, the importance of automotive-grade chips as the core components of automotive electronic systems has become increasingly prominent. In the following, this article will conduct an in-depth analysis of the automotive-grade chip industry based on Grant Thornton's industry insight research, aiming to reveal the current market conditions, main characteristics, development trends, and challenges.
Overview of the automotive-grade chip industry
1. Classification of automotive-grade chips
Specification-level chips are the core components of automobiles, and play an important role in various fields such as vehicle electrification, intelligence, networking, and sharing.
1. Control chips: Control chips are computing chips in automobiles, which can be divided into MCU (micro control unit) and chip SoC (system-on-chip) according to the scale of integration. Among them, MCU chips usually contain only one processing unit of the CPU, while SoC chips contain multiple processing units, such as CPU, GPU, DSP, NPU storage and interface units. Computing and control chips are mainly microcontrollers and logic ICs, which are mainly used for computational analysis and decision-making.
2. Power chips: This type of chip mainly includes chips in electric vehicle inverters and converters. The power chip mainly converts electrical energy and controls the circuit.
3. Sensor chips: These chips include radars and cameras in smart cars, which are used for vehicle perception and recognition. It is mainly responsible for sensing the operating conditions of the car and converting the non-electrical quantity information into point blood output.
4. Other categories: In addition to the above three categories, automotive-grade chips also include wireless communication and vehicle interface chips, automotive memory and other types of chips.
Compared with consumer and industrial chips, automotive-grade chips have higher reliability, security, and stability requirements. These chips need to operate stably in harsh automotive environments with a wide temperature range (-40°C to +150°C), high vibration, dust, electromagnetic interference, etc., and meet the needs of long-term supply (typically 10-15 years). According to the division of functions, automotive-grade chips mainly include computing and control chips, power chips, sensor chips, etc.
figure1: Types of automotive grade chip (source:Grant Thornton）
Second, market dynamics
With the continuous improvement of the level of automotive intelligence and electrification, the market demand for automotive-grade chips continues to grow. According to market research data, the global automotive-grade chip market is expected to maintain rapid growth in the next few years. Especially in the fields of autonomous driving and new energy vehicles, the application of automotive-grade chips will be more extensive. In 2022, the global automotive-grade chip market size will be US$56.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 10.4% compared with 2021. According to market research firm Omdia, the global demand for automotive-grade chips will reach $80.4 billion in 2025.
In 2022, China's new energy vehicle sales jumped to 6.887 million units, a year-on-year increase of 96%, and the annual penetration rate increased to 25.6%, which has reached the planning target of 20% penetration rate in 2025 ahead of schedule. According to IDC, a market research institution, the scale of new energy in China is expected to reach 15.241 million in 2025, and the penetration rate of new energy vehicles will reach 43%. The continuous improvement of the penetration rate of new energy vehicles has promoted the continuous expansion of the scale of the vehicle specification market.
figure2: the increasing scale of automotive-grade chip(source:Grant Thornton)
Third,Features of automotive-grade chips
Compared with consumer-grade and industrial-grade chips, automotive-grade chips have the characteristics of high reliability and high stability, and are required to meet the requirements of AEC (Automotive Electronics Council) specifications. In addition, automotive-grade chips also need to have performance characteristics such as high speed, large capacity, and low latency to meet the data transmission and processing requirements of automotive electronic control systems. At the same time, in order to ensure the safety of vehicles and road infrastructure, automotive-grade chips also need to have strong safety mechanisms and redundant designs.
figure3: features of automotive-grade chip
Automotive-grade chips play a vital role in automotive electronic systems, and they need to be characterized by high reliability, high security, high performance, low power consumption, and long-term supply to meet the harsh environment and safety standards of the automotive industry.
