Since 2022, the semiconductor industry has shown a bipolar development trend: under the influence of epidemic and high inflation, the supply of consumer chips has exceeded the demand, and manufacturers' inventories are high; Under the trend of electrification and intellectualization, the demand of the automobile market continues to rise, and the supply of automobile chips cannot meet the demand. The semiconductor industry has also entered the structural phase of automobile chips from the overall core shortage.
Influenced by the shortage of chips, many automobile enterprises have encountered difficulties in production. Recently, another auto company said that it would lower the target value of auto output.
Lack of core, another car enterprise reduced production
On November 22, Toyota said that in December 2022, the global planned vehicle production would be about 750000 vehicles, a decrease of about 6% compared with the actual production in December last year (800000 vehicles).
Due to the continuous shortage of automotive chips, some production lines of Toyota's three assembly plants in Japan will be shut down in December. Among them, the second production line of Takaoka Factory (located in Toyota City, Aichi County) will be shut down for 2 days, and the first production line of Tanabara Factory (Tanabara City) will be shut down for 4 days. SUV "Hound" and "Land Cruiser" as the main vehicles will be affected.
At the same time, affected by the shortage of automotive chips, Toyota also lowered its global production target for this fiscal year (April 2022 to March 2023) from 9.7 million to 9.2 million.
Earlier, Nissan's US subsidiary also said that the supply chain problem would force its assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi, to reduce production in November. Nissan said that it would reduce the production days of Titan and Frontier hatchback trucks and Altima cars in November, and the production days in December are also expected to decline. A memorandum provided to dealers wrote: "The reason for reducing the number of production days is that the supply chain is interrupted due to the continuous shortage of semiconductor chips."
In addition to production reduction, since the outbreak of "core shortage" of automobiles, many automobile enterprises have also taken measures such as reducing distribution delivery, delaying delivery, and cross-border self-developed automobile chips in response to "core shortage".
Cut orders, and the shortage of car chips will reverse?
The "core shortage" of automobiles has lasted for nearly two years. When will it come to an end? Recently, Morgan Stanley Securities said to the public that some automotive semiconductor manufacturers, such as Renesa Semiconductor, Ansome Semiconductor and other MCU and CIS suppliers, are currently cutting some chip test orders in the fourth quarter.
It is reported that in recent years, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of auto semiconductor revenue is 20%, while the auto output is only 10%. The supply of automotive chips should exceed the demand by the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021. However, due to the epidemic, the supply chain of automotive chips was blocked or even cut off, which led to a shortage of automotive chips.
With the easing of the epidemic, the supply chain is unblocked, and the decline of consumer demand, the foundry manufacturers such as TSMC have significantly increased the production capacity of automotive chips. The shortage of automotive chips is improving.
Against this background, some auto semiconductor manufacturers "cut orders" as if to release the signal that there will no longer be a shortage of auto chips, and even that there will be an excess of auto chips.
However, this phenomenon only happens to some products of some manufacturers for the time being. In the overall automotive chip market, the industry generally believes that the shortage of automotive chips will continue for one to two years.
Recently, Xu Daquan, Executive Vice President of Bosch China, said that there will be a continuous shortage of automotive chips in 2023. "According to the feedback of many chip suppliers, the current order demand of Bosch cannot be met next year, and there are still gaps, even some gaps are relatively large."
Earlier, the German news agency reported that at present, it takes six months from ordering to delivery of German car chips, twice the normal time. It is expected that the supply of automotive chips will exceed the demand until 2024.