Since 2021, although the growth rate of the smart wearable market has slowed down, the process of electrification and intelligentization of automotive field has accelerated under the new energy era. The growth space of the automotive electronics business has become the focus of the market, and smart cars are expected to take over from smart wearables and keep the “electronics +” innovation trend.
Overview of the automotive market
It can be noticed that the proportion of automotive electronic use in new energy vehicles is higher than that of traditional vehicles. The rapid increase in the penetration rate of new energy vehicles is a strong driving force for the growth of the automotive electronics market.
According to data, the sales of new energy vehicles have rapidly increased from 777,000 in 2017 to 3,520,500 in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate of 45.9%. In 2022, the amount of new energy vehicles reached 5 million with a year-on-year increase of 42%.
Automotive PCB: electrification and intelligence drive sales growth
The power control system contributes the largest increase in the automotive PCB. New energy vehicles have a greater demand for PCBs due to differences in their power systems. Compared with traditional automotive, new energy vehicles replace gasoline engines, fuel tanks or transmissions with the “three-electric system”(batteries, motors, and electronic control systems).
The hardware value improvement cause by the electrical architecture change is significantly higher than that of vehicle-mounted infotainment system and interconnection system. Among them, the MCU, VCU and BMS of the electronic control system stimulate the increase amount of PCB.
For example, in new energy vehicles, the VCU vehicle control circuit PCB consumes about 0.03 square meters per vehicle, and the MCU motor controller consumes 0.15 square meters.
As the core component of the battery unit, the BMS has a more complex structure, consisting of a master control (BCU) and a slave control (BMU). The main control circuit PCB consumes about 0.24 square meters per vehicle, and the single management unit is 1-3 square meters.
As the level of autonomous driving increases, the amount of sensors used in ADAS will increase rapidly, driving the demand for automotive PCBs. In ADAS, sensors such as camera, radar (RADAR), and laser radar (LiDAR) are used as the main hardware of the autonomous driving perception layer to realize information transmission. L2+~L5 high-level autonomous driving requires at least 5 radars and 6-8 cameras (including front-view, surround-view, rear-view, side-view and built-in cameras).
In 2020, the global market for radar, camera, lidar and computing ADAS used in automotive ADAS will reach 8.6 billion USD. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22% in the next five years, reaching 22.4 billion USD in 2025, of which the radar and camera market cover the largest market share.
Automotive passive components: New energy vehicles have become the main driving force
Passive components are used in a wide range of fields, ranging from smartphones and automobiles to electronic equipment such as airplanes and high-speed rails. Therefore, passive components are the basic products in the electronics industry.
In addition, passive components have a wide range of docking industries, which are cheap but necessary. In the process of the development of automobiles towards electrification and intelligence, the demand for passive components such as capacitors, inductors, and resistors has also increased significantly.
MLCC: With the growth of the electric vehicle market and the improvement of the specifications of the intelligent assisted driving system, the consumption of MLCC has doubled. Among them, taking the MLCC consumption of traditional fuel vehicles as a benchmark, electric vehicles are 2.2 times that of fuel vehicles, and electric intelligence is 2.7 times. Electric self-driving cars are as high as 3.3 times.
The global demand for carbon neutrality policies have set off an upsurge in electric vehicles. The electrification and intelligence of vehicles will also become the main driving force for the future growth of the MLCC industry.
Film capacitors: In new energy vehicles, they are mainly used in the three fields of new energy vehicle inverters, on-board chargers, and supporting charging piles.
Under normal circumstances, one custom film capacitor is used for the electric drive part of each new energy vehicle, and one custom film capacitor for auxiliary drive is also used for four-wheel drive electric vehicles.
In 2022, the global new energy vehicle film capacitor market size is expected to be 3.66 billion yuan. According to the data of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in 2022, the domestic production of more than 5 million new energy vehicles is expected, and the domestic automotive customized film capacitor market is expected to exceed 1.5 billion yuan.
Automotive semiconductors: focus on the two main lines of data flow and energy flow
Under the background of electrification, intelligence, and networking of automobiles, the value chain of automobile products is reshaped: automobiles take electric energy as the axis, upgrade from vehicles to networked intelligent mobile terminals, and form competitive elements with hardware, software and services as the core. Therefore, new energy vehicles have become the core incremental application scenarios of the semiconductor industry in the future, and the corresponding incremental space is developed along the two main lines of energy flow and data flow:
Energy flow: It is the underlying energy support for the operation of the car, from external charging equipment, on-board charger OBC (used when the input is AC current) to (1) big three power (high-voltage power battery, electric control and drive motor) serving the driving domain.
(2) Small three electrics (low-voltage batteries, small and medium-sized micro-electronic controls and motors) serve the body area; in a top-down manner, complete vehicles, systems, and devices are progressively advanced. In the process, the power conversion is realized. The consumption of supporting chips for power semiconductors and power management will increase significantly.
Data flow: Provide top-level control for car operation, realize assisted/intelligent driving from information perception to processing applications, and at the same time, carry out information interaction (HUD, central control instrument, car lights, glass, etc.)
The automotive electrical structure has evolved from a distributed architecture (Distributed) to a Domain Centralized architecture (Domain Centralized).
During this process, the cockpit domain and assisted/automatic driving domain have led to a significant increase in the computing power requirements of the main chip/computing platform of the domain controller, the number of sensor system chips, and the performance requirements.
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