几块钱的小芯片，卡住了汽车厂商的喉咙

The humble little chip

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Your life and mine

Chip is the most familiar stranger in most people's life.

It almost exists in every corner of life, even this article, because of the cooperation of countless chips, in order to appear in front of your eyes. To modern people, chips are as necessary as water, air and electricity.

Chips are the foundation of the age of electrification, powered by a tiny chip that runs everything from the iPhone to King of Glory to the Quad duck dancing to music.

Although the difference in manufacturing process and complexity between the two is greater than that between TYrannosaurus rex and Alligator, the working principle is very different -- both are minisized integrated circuits that represent data by changing the ones and zeros of transistors, with only a "billion" point difference in integration degree.

In the past, when talking about chips, most people think of Intel Core CPU, Apple A series and other high-end chips with 10nm, 5nm advanced manufacturing process.

At the digital new product conference, the chip with strong performance is always the absolute leading role. The percentage of performance improvement when the chip is replaced is the most powerful tool to mobilize the audience's adrenaline. The greater the improvement, the greater the cheers.

However, some "small chips" directly related to computing performance, such as power management chips and keyboard input detection chips, often do not receive more attention from consumers. It seems that their existence does not affect consumers' purchasing decisions. For a long time, consumers only pay for the performance of chips.

However, a sudden lack of core tide changed the rules of the game, this time, "small chip" became a leading role.

A life strangled by a chip

For example, after the water cut off, people will find that tap water is not easy, until the lack of core tide hit, people realize that their life has been controlled by countless small chips, pulling a will move the whole body.

Since 2020, chip industry suffered from the global spread of COVID - 19 outbreak, local region geopolitical conflicts and natural disasters such as multiple "black swans", stable balance is broken, years of industry chain upstream and downstream industries are influenced by different degree, these fluctuations and like dominoes spread to all over the world.

According to a Goldman Sachs study published in 2021, at least 169 industries are affected by the global chip shortage, of which the automotive and consumer electronics industries are most directly relevant to us.

If you've been shopping for a car or digital product such as a mobile phone or computer in the past two years, you may have noticed an increase in the number of "pre-orders", "shortages" and "late delivery" that are holding you back from spending your money.

In the notebook category, for example, we used to wait for notebook manufacturers to offer big discounts at shopping festivals like Singles' Day and 618, so that we could get an absolute bargain. Now, if you can't snaggle some of the most popular models at launch, you're left with a long wait for restocking, and still want a discount? It was good enough without a markup.

In addition to rising demand for laptops, this is largely due to a continuing shortage of chips.

HP and Dell, leading suppliers to the PC industry, both warned last year that a shortage of chips for computer components was making it difficult to meet strong demand.

Surprisingly, it was not high-end processors from Intel and AMD that tripped up the giants, but basic chips such as "humble" Wi-Fi connectivity chips and power-management chips.

These basic chips, which use mature processes (28nm and above), are much cheaper than processors that typically run on advanced 7nm processes, and would normally be the least of manufacturers' worries.

But mature chips were the first to suffer, and supply gaps quickly emerged, turning the sips into laptops' Achilles' heel.

Until now, supply of power-management chips has been a volatile issue for manufacturers like Asus, whose ability to meet their shipment targets depends on whether there is a shortage of these smaller chips.

In response to the chip crisis, chipmakers including TSMC, Intel, Samsung and SMIC have been investing tens of billions of dollars in new factories around the world in the past two years to boost chip capacity.

However, in the short term, this cup of "far water" is still difficult to solve the immediate urgency. As an industry with heavy assets and strong cycle, it takes at least 3-5 years from the investment to the mass production of chips. The long recycling cycle means that the international crisis still needs more time to solve.

In late April, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger told the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos that the global chip shortage is unlikely to end until 2024 and that the supply situation is not encouraging.

It is difficult to turn a ship about

Also troubled by the problem of lack of core is the auto industry.

Since 2020, auto factories have been forced to shut down and reduce production due to lack of core. Toyota, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler and other auto giants have reduced production plans to varying degrees.

By the end of April, the global auto market had lost about 1,585,500 vehicles due to chip shortages this year, according to AutoForecast Solutions, adding 10.5 million vehicles lost globally in 2021. The global car market has lost more than 12 million vehicles due to chip shortages.

This is an indiscriminate assault on the car industry, and whether you are a new power or an old power, you inevitably get caught up in it.

The most direct impact of the lack of core on consumers is that the delivery time is greatly extended, which is particularly obvious in the new energy vehicle industry.

Now if you want to buy a Tesla Model 3, the official website shows that the delivery time has been at least five months later, and if you choose a Domestic new power brand represented by "Wei Xiaoli", you also need to wait two to three months before the delivery.

In addition to the long waiting period, consumers will face another headache when buying a car -- some chips and components are in short supply, and there will be a certain degree of "reduction" in the production process.

Take Tesla as an example. In November 2021, Due to chip shortage, Tesla reduced the usB-C interface of the center control and rear seat of the interior of Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, and the wireless charging function of mobile phones was also unavailable. After being questioned by consumers, Tesla responded that it would add corresponding accessories in the future. But the timing is not guaranteed.

In February, an internal letter leaked that Tesla would remove one of the two electronic control units in the electronic power steering system from its Shanghai-made Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, also in response to the core shortage crisis.

Car manufacturers, including BMW, Ideal and Xiaopeng, have all carried out similar operations in the past year. Ideal and Xiaopeng promised to make up for consumers' losses by adding new cars, while BMW and Tesla rarely responded to the reduction.

Whether consumers can get compensation for the reduction depends entirely on the sincerity of car manufacturers.

The reason why carmakers are risking their reputation by using subtraction is because of the industry's heavy reliance on chips.

According to industry surveys, a conventional fuel car needs to use more than 1,000 chips on average, while smart cars equipped with functions such as autonomous driving use more than 3,000 chips.

In order to make the vehicle run smoothly for a long time, the requirements for the vehicle's environmental adaptability, reliability and consistency will be much higher.

Moreover, the development of each part requires a large amount of verification work, and each component replacement needs to be verified again. Therefore, automobile enterprises will choose to establish stable supply relationship with Bosch and other suppliers, and rarely choose to replace parts easily.

Once the supply of some of the small driving-related chips is in trouble, auto makers have little choice but to wait for suppliers to resume deliveries or pay hefty premiums to brokers.

For chips that do not directly affect driving safety, automakers have to cut the complexity and sell some functions, or shut down production lines. In North America, Cadillac, Ford and others are already selling retrofitted versions of cars with phone and seat heating.

Recently, He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Automobile, used the keda duck toy of "Urgent need chip" to reflect the supply status of the team on the social platform. The core problem in the supply chain, he says, is not a lack of "sophisticated" chips, as is traditionally thought, but cheap chips, which are not fungible enough to cause supply problems.

From 2020 to now, the core shortage event lasting for 2 years has gradually evolved into a structural problem. The characteristics of high input and long output of the chip industry doomed the "chip shortage" to have no "magic pill" in a short time, which can only be left to the market for more time to adjust.

The semiconductor industry has gone through many boom and bust cycles so far, only to have a sudden outbreak of demand accelerate the cycle, triggering a sudden boom that has rewritten the fortunes of the tech and auto industries.

But no one can say for sure how long the semiconductor boom will last, and how long it will take industries that have hit the pause button to resume growth. All, can only hope in the future full of uncertainty.