China is the world's largest consumer of automobiles and has already taken the lead in the production and manufacturing of smart electric vehicles. Public data shows that in the first three quarters of this year, the market share of domestic brands in the Chinese market reached 43.3%, an increase of 6.8 percentage points year-on-year. The fundamental reason is the rise of smart electric vehicles.
No one expected that domestic smart electric vehicles would accelerate and advance, but they would stumble over chips.
Due to the lack of millimeter wave radar chips, Chinese electric vehicle brands either reduce the configuration and deliver semi-finished products first, or simply lower the delivery volume. Regardless of the solution, it may cause users to "complain".
The reason why car companies rely so much on millimeter wave radar chips is because they are key components of smart electric vehicles.
Simply put, car millimeter wave radar emits millimeter waves outward through an antenna, receives target reflection signals, and after processing, can quickly and accurately obtain important information during the driving process such as relative distance, relative speed, angle, and direction of motion between the car and other objects, which can be called the eye of intelligent driving.
Millimeter wave radar has advantages such as high detection accuracy, small hardware size, all-weather operation, and is not easily affected by weather. Its price is also much lower than that of laser radar, so it is adopted by most car companies.
Relatively high-quality performance has given rise to a billion dollar market. According to Puhua Youce's prediction, the global market size of vehicle mounted millimeter wave radars in 2020 is 3.9 billion US dollars, equivalent to approximately 24 billion RMB; It is expected that by 2025, the global vehicle mounted millimeter wave radar market will reach 9.2 billion US dollars, equivalent to approximately 58.6 billion RMB, and the corresponding domestic market will also reach 17.9 billion RMB.
The market is so rich, but it is controlled by five major Western giants, including Bosch, Continental, Haila, Fujitsu, and Nippon Electric, with a total market share of 75%.
Specifically, millimeter wave radar chips are monopolized by foreign companies. From the market share of domestic and foreign companies in millimeter wave radar chips, it can be seen that the current market is mainly occupied by Western chip design giants such as NXP, Infineon, and Texas Instruments. They not only monopolize the market, but also impose long-term technological lockdowns on China.