According to the Korean Automotive Industry Association (KAMA), the global car sales in January-April this year increased by 32.4% compared with the same period last year.
Among them, China’s growth, 1-April of car sales increased by 52.3% over the same period last year. Since March last year, the Chinese market has turned to the growth of car sales, and semiconductor stocks in advance, so the semiconductor import volume increased by 15% over the previous year.
In the US market (growth 29.1%), but the US market, due to the re-spread of the epidemic, causing consumption shrinkage, car sales decline this year . It is now the market level before the epidemic. As of last month, US car stocks at the lowest level of 30 years, only half of the appropriate inventory level (70-75 days) (34 days).
As far as Europe (23.1% increase), sales recovery relatively lagged due to differences in economic recovery in various countries. However, sales of electric vehicles (hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles), which reached a record high, was rapidly resumed, and rapidly increased to 10.46,000 in the first quarter. This year is 93.3% over the same period last year.
However, the future prospect is not bright. This is because the shortage of supply and demand of semiconductor chips is longer than expected, and sales growth in the automotive market is being suppressed. In particular, since all industries are now competing for semiconductor chips, as well as the rapid growth of new energy vehicles, the problem of chip shortage may not have passed this year.
One of the factors that exacerbate this problem is that semiconductor companies will focus on semiconductors for high profit information technology (IT) equipment, Not the semiconductor for vehicles. According to the US Market Research Corporation Gartner, the global personal computer (PC) shipments in the first quarter of this year is 69.9 million units, an increase of 32% over the same period last year, showing the highest growth rate in 20 years.
The second reason is that the demand for the huge semiconductor chip in the Chinese market has also exceeded expectations. Prior to outbreak of the epidemic, China’s semiconductanceThe number of imports of the body has maintained growth, but the import volume in the first quarter increased by 30% compared with the same period last year, and it grew by 43% compared to the first quarter of 2019. The rapid growth in the Chinese market is that there is no imagination world. 
The third reason is the rapid development of new energy vehicles, the number of chips needed for new energy vehicles is usually 5 times more of internal combustion engine. And with the development of intelligent cars, automakers have increased significantly for the demand for chips. In order to compete for the new energy auto market, it is also vigorous to subsidize new energy vehicles.
In addition, due to the shortage of chips, the demand of other raw materials such as crude oil, steel, copper, etc., and related crude oil, steel, copper, etc. growth of. Therefore, there is currently the price of these underlying raw materials, including maritime transportation has reached the highest level in the past 10 years. It is reported that by the end of last month, the price of copper rose by 11.8 percentage from last month.
The global chip shortage will bring a large blow to the powerful automakers. We use South Korea as an example of modern and Kia cars to resist risky ability. However, several small car companies in South Korea, such as Renault Samsung, Shuanglong Auto, the size of the body is not large, and is also affected by the shortage of chip. The components have already been disconnected.
So for automakers, now in order to ensure smooth production, it has to be adjusted to the product line, such as will no longer The best-selling model is discontinued in advance, or cut some technological configuration in the new model, and appropriately reduces some selling prices to pass through the difficulties.