Very few have been rejected at once... Shanghai Automotive Engine Factory has presented 49 automotive grade chips to solicit domestic alternatives to SAIC | Netherlands | United States | Lingang Pujiang International Science and Technology City | Substitution | Import | Localization | Automotive grade chips

Recently, SAIC Group has unveiled 49 high computing power and high specification automotive chips that urgently need joint research and development to the Shanghai Automotive Chip Industry Alliance, seeking the feasibility of domestic substitution. As a result, very few were rejected by alliance members, and most chips were classified as "negotiable", greatly boosting industry confidence. This is the information obtained by the reporter from the Shanghai Integrated Circuit Industry Cluster Innovation Achievement Exchange and the First Work Conference of the Automotive Chip Industry Alliance.

In Shanghai, a key city in the automotive industry and a highland in the integrated circuit industry, an automotive chip industry alliance has been established this year, and a demonstration service platform for automotive chip testing has also been awarded a license. In addition, Shanghai has compiled the "Yangtze River Delta Automotive Electronic Chip Handbook" for three consecutive years, achieving regional cooperation and progress. This series of major actions are all accelerating the autonomous and controllable process in the field of automotive electronics.

At this meeting, Zhou Sanguo, the manager of SAIC R&D Institute, introduced that SAIC had conducted a "cutting edge" approach based on 268 types of chips involved in a typical car model, and ultimately divided the maturity of the domestic chip supply chain into three categories. One type of chip refers to mature chips that have been mass-produced and applied in domestic vehicles, such as image sensor chips, storage chips, low-end MCU chips, etc., accounting for 44%; Class II chips refer to chips that have already been localized but have not been mass-produced and applied in the entire vehicle, such as high-performance power supply chips, Ethernet chips, power chassis sensor chips, intelligent drive chips, etc. They are mainly used in fields such as braking, steering, power, etc. that require high functional safety and vehicle specifications, accounting for 34.7%; The three types of chips are the real challenges, such as safety airbag sensor chips, semi full bridge drive and pre drive chips, safety airbag ignition chips, etc. These chips are either limited by technology, strong binding and other factors, or due to unfeasible business models, potential solutions have not yet been found, accounting for 21.3%.

Regarding the most challenging 21.3%, Zhou Sanguo's suggestion is "car core linkage" - automobile host companies and suppliers make full use of existing resources and incentive policies, deploy troops to guard, connect the entire industry chain from whole vehicles, automobile parts to chips and vehicle specification testing, and improve the complete industrial ecosystem including chip production and manufacturing, design verification, and supporting software and hardware.

In fact, Shanghai is already taking action. In February of this year, under the guidance of the Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology, the Shanghai Transportation Electronics Industry Association and the Shanghai Integrated Circuit Industry Association jointly initiated the establishment of the Shanghai Automotive Chip Industry Alliance with more than 40 enterprises, including SAIC Group, United Electronics, Huada Semiconductor, and Huahong Hongli. Guo Yiwu, Secretary General of the Municipal Integrated Circuit Industry Association, introduced that the alliance has formed a complete industry chain model of "research and development+manufacturing+application", focusing on difficulties such as research and development application collaboration, process technology improvement, and manufacturing capacity breakthrough. "The focus is on promoting the matching of mature domestically produced chips in sensors, modules, and systems, and taking the lead in demonstration applications in social vehicles. In the fields of new energy and intelligent networking, the alliance will gradually promote forward-looking and replaceable chip system research and development through a joint model of" whole vehicle+system supplier+chip enterprise ", and conduct on-site verification."

At the same time, Lingang Pujiang International Science and Technology City, which has gathered a large number of leading enterprises such as Biren Technology and Tiantian Zhixin, is also accelerating the construction of industrial and supporting chains. Recently, Lingang Pujiang Park, in collaboration with industry associations, investment institutions, and park enterprises, has jointly initiated the establishment of the Lingang Pujiang Innovation "Core" ecosystem. To address the pain points of chip companies, Huace Weisibo Testing Technology Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Automotive Chip Engineering Center Co., Ltd. are also collaborating to build a demonstration service platform for automotive chip testing. According to the reporter's understanding, chip companies have high chip production costs and must rely on wafer manufacturers. However, due to tight production capacity, wafer factories often have no time to consider small orders. Shanghai Automotive Chip Engineering Center provides small batch trial production lines to help small and medium-sized chip enterprises solve wafer manufacturing problems, aiming to achieve a monthly production capacity of 5000 pieces.

The mature path of domestically produced automotive grade chips is not achieved overnight. It is reported that a manual has been written year by year since 2021, like a signboard, for enterprises on the chain to meet their needs, and the response from enterprises is extremely enthusiastic. This meeting announced the start of the chip solicitation work for the 2023 Yangtze River Delta Automotive Electronic Chip Handbook. Xu Xiufa, Senior Advisor of the Municipal Integrated Circuit Industry Association, told reporters that the number of enterprises participating in the manual collection in the three provinces and cities of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, and Shanghai increased from 48 in 2021 to 69 in 2022, and the number of domestically produced automotive grade chips collected increased from 148 to 215. "In this year's solicitation, we also do not set a threshold for the number of chips in a single enterprise, but the technical threshold must be products that have passed or are currently undergoing AEC-Q100 reliability certification." Xu Xiufa said that although the current import rate of automotive chips in China is as high as 95%, through ecological construction, upstream and downstream collaborative research, combined with policy support, the localization rate will definitely have a significant breakthrough in 3 to 5 years.