The chip shortage in the auto industry, which has been plaguing numerous auto companies since December last year, has not eased up, but is getting worse.

General Motors has announced plans to close plants that make the Chevy Bolt EV and Bolt EUV due to a global chip shortage. Toyota also said it would cut vehicle production by 40 percent in September because of a shortage of parts.

In the first half of the year, all parties have been seeking to solve the "chip shortage", why the second half of the situation intensified?

When the reporter interviews the personage in the industry, a lot of people happened to coincide with the spearhead of the epidemic in Southeast Asia. Xu Daquan, vice president of Bosch China, recently posted a message on social media, saying that due to the epidemic in Malaysia, the factory of a semiconductor chip supplier in Mapo, Malaysia, has been closed by the local government until August 21. Novel coronavirus infections have occurred in 3000 workers at the plant, resulting in 20 deaths.

Meanwhile, Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City announced on August 23 that it was stepping up its quarantine measures and banning people from going out until September 15. Intel, Samsung and other companies have chip manufacturers or contract factories in Vietnam.

As a matter of fact, as early as June this year, Malaysia implemented a strict national lockdown policy, which resulted in a large number of shutdowns in the important process of chip sealing and testing, and temporarily affected the semiconductor supply chain. Malaysia, known as the global "transit point" for chips, is home to suppliers and factories for many semiconductor companies, serving European semiconductor makers such as France-Italia and Infineon, as well as major carmakers such as Toyota Motor and Ford Motor. This round of epidemic has greatly affected the supply capacity of local manufacturers in Malaysia.

Supply of important semiconductors for cars and industrial machinery is likely to remain in short supply throughout next year, according to ROHM, the Kyoto-based chip maker.

More crucially, the "chip shortage" hit the car industry harder. Semiconductor chip companies have shifted their production focus to the field of consumer electronics due to the "home economy" created by the epidemic and the increased demand for chips used in smartphones and computers in the global market. As automakers resume production, semiconductor chips as a whole are in short supply.

Automobile "core", in fact, the vast majority do not belong to high-end chips, but the cost is relatively low, but in the automotive field is quite widely used in the 8-inch wafer, almost every car used ECU, ESP are created by it.

Reporters learned that because the production of 8-inch wafer equipment has long been discontinued, most 8-inch wafer manufacturers have more than 10 years of equipment, resulting in most of the equipment is too old, and difficult to repair. Statistics show that from 2008 to 2016, at least more than 30 8-inch fabs were closed, while more than 10 factories converted from 8-inch to 12-inch wafers. From 2015 to 2017, the global capacity growth rate of 8-inch fabs was only about 7%, and by 2019, the number of 8-inch fabs in the world has been less than 200.

In terms of real profits and trends, there is definitely a lack of motivation for 12-inch wafer makers to scale back to 8-inch wafers with thinner margins. In addition, in recent years, a large number of 6-inch fabs have closed and demand for discrete components, power components, analog chips and other products has shifted to 8-inch wafers. This has added to the burden of 8-inch capacity and squeezed the automotive chip market, which is already undersupplied.

In the global automotive chip shortage, China's domestic auto industry has picked up momentum, which is not high chip self-sufficiency rate of China, apparently "lack of core" degree is more serious.

A marketing staff member of an auto manufacturer told China Trade News that in addition to being affected by supply and demand, hoarding does not rule out the phenomenon in circulation. Although the regular agent dealers will comply with the industry rules, but some of the larger channels and traders, due to sufficient funds, can also be in the market a large number of "sweeping goods", and then raise the price.

Since the beginning of this year, due to some objective factors such as the rise of raw materials, most chip companies have raised product prices, the reasonable increase should be between 20% and 30%, and the final transmission to the market price increase of 40% to 50% is more reasonable. However, industry sources said that in some other channels, individual dealers can provide chips for cars, but the quoted price is much higher than the normal factory price.

In this regard, the State Administration for Market Regulation recently issued a document, in view of the auto chip market hype, high prices and other prominent problems, according to the price monitoring and reporting clues, will be suspected of price gouging auto chip distribution enterprises investigation. The State Administration for Market Regulation said it will continue to pay attention to the price order of chips and other important commodities in the market, further strengthen supervision and law enforcement, severely punish hoarding, price gouging, price collusion and other illegal activities.

Faced with this round of "chip shortage", the multi-country industry of the United States, Japan and the European Union has reached a new consensus, that is, in order to ensure the safety of their own industries, they will no longer pursue division of labor, but establish a relatively controllable and complete chip supply system, even if it may lead to cost increase.

The widespread shutdowns at overseas chip plants could also give a boost to China's domestic manufacturers. According to the latest research report of some investment banks, as mainland China is one of the regions with better epidemic control in the world, it also has a large number of high-quality semiconductor packaging manufacturers. Repeated outbreaks abroad are expected to accelerate the transfer of sealed test orders to the Chinese mainland.