Asians' efforts to address deficiencies

Khodrocar - Although in recent months, due to increasing demand from China and the United States for car imports, the production of Japanese carmakers, including Toyota, Nissan and Honda, has increased, but due to the continuing challenge of the epidemic of Corona and This is followed by further reductions in electronic chips; The outlook for the car industry is bleak.

In 2011, after the Tohoku earthquake and the ensuing tsunami, factories owned by Rensas Electronics were flooded, causing a severe shock to the company and shutting down the aftershocks of Ransas Electronics. The devastating wave hit the skies of Japan's auto industry as the country's auto industry was heavily dependent on Renasas.

Now, a decade after that, the outbreak of the Corona virus has caused the global automotive industry to find itself in a similar situation to 2011, so that now Corona is disrupted in the supply chain of electronic system manufacturers, which is the heart in today's automotive world. Considered modern cars, the automotive industry is once again stuck in production bottlenecks.

Nowadays, cars no longer have the same meaning and concept, and in many cases, cars are like a computer on wheels, about 40% of their value is made up of electronic components, and this has led suppliers and manufacturers of auto parts to supply the chips needed. Automobiles are in trouble because many chip companies offer a large portion of their products to factories supplying mobile phones, game consoles and computers.

With the increasing demand for electronics due to the quarantine of people following the corona outbreak, electronic chips are in short supply, which has led car manufacturers around the world to cut production when sales went faster than expected.

A review of previous US administration measures to restrict technology transfers to China and hit Chinese chipmakers, while a fire at a chipmaker in Japan and the closure of the Corona virus in Southeast Asia have exacerbated the restrictions. has done.

Automotive experts and activists predict that the shortage of electronics could cost the auto industry $ 14 billion in losses in the first quarter of the year and $ 61 billion for the year as a whole, and the depth of the catastrophe is a Taiwanese company heavily responsible for chip production. Electronics for cars around the world In the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, it was able to receive 56% of its revenue by supplying electronics and chips from the automotive industry.

This would mean that the automotive industry was moving towards electrification and the use of electronic components in its structure in a situation that was not in line with the supply of infrastructure.

This comes as Asian chip companies are expanding production capacity to address the global shortage that has plagued the production of many industries, especially automakers. Microchip factories, which are mostly owned by Asian companies and usually produce less advanced chips, have been in short supply due to low investment in recent years, and most of these factories use them to produce automotive chips. To be.

China chipmaker SMIC announced last week that it would increase its wafer production capacity at its eight-inch factory to 45,000 wafers a month this year. However, the company noted that capacity building will not happen quickly because the supply of equipment will take time and the company will continue to struggle with supply chain disruptions due to sanctions imposed by the former US administration.

Taiwan-based TSMC, the world's largest contract chip maker, has said it will expand production of automotive-related products and now expects $ 25 billion to $ 28 billion in capital expenditures to develop and develop advanced chips this year, up 60 percent. Will be in 2020.
United Microelectronics (UMC), another Taiwanese chip maker, plans to spend $ 1.5 billion on new equipment this year, up 50 percent from $ 1 billion last year.

South Korea's SK Heinix, the world's second-largest chip maker, has accelerated plans to move its 8-inch chip plant to China and expects it to cut costs. The company is trying to make the move as quickly as possible instead of the two-year plan it had previously planned.

According to the automaker, it is generally unclear how long the shortage of chips will last. In this regard, Macquarie Company (Australia's largest financial services and banking provider) predicts that car production will be affected by these shortages by mid-2021.