Development Status and Prospect of Automotive Electronics in China

With the rapid development of China’s automotive industry, the demand for automotive electronic products in the domestic market has also increased rapidly. In this case, there are many factors that restrict the development of automotive electronic products. This paper introduces the prospects, composition and influencing factors of automotive electronic products; The factors restricting the development of China’s automotive electronic products are specifically analyzed in terms of technology research and development, device supply system, production management and understanding of the investment in electronic products.
I. Market prospect of automobile electronic products
With the continuous improvement of the degree of automotive electronics, the market of automotive electronic products has also become increasingly large and maintained rapid growth. The market demand for electronic components of passenger cars in the United States was 2.6 billion dollars in 1988, about doubled in 1993 to 5.4 billion dollars, and reached 14 billion dollars in 2000. The average annual growth rate is 15-16%. Globally, the market size in 2002 was about $26.9 billion. By 2007, the market size is expected to reach $35.4 billion. The markets in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe will grow the fastest. In North America and Europe, the price of electronic components has reached 10-15% of the total vehicle price. It is estimated that the price of automobile electronic equipment will account for 25-30% of the price of the whole vehicle by 2010
So far, the largest demand in the global automotive electronic component market is for power transmission electronic systems. From 2002 to 2007, power transmission electronic systems will grow steadily. Body and chassis control electronic systems will maintain an 11.7% growth rate, and their market size is expected to increase from $2.7 billion to $4.7 billion. Safety and comfort electronic systems will grow rapidly.
II. The Composition of Automotive Electronics and the Development Status of Automotive Electronics in China Automotive Electronics
It mainly consists of five parts:
Power control system: including engine management control system, power steering, AT control, and ACC.
Safety control system: including airbag, ABS/ASR, and SAFE-BY-WIRE.
3 Body control system: including switch control, light control, anti-theft system, door lock control, window control, wiper and other body electronic control.
4 Ride control system: including instrument, air conditioning and chassis control system.
5 Information system: including entertainment, mobile communication, GPS navigation and information processing systems.
The current situation of domestic automotive electronics enterprises is that they start late, have small scale, low level, and are difficult to match. Due to the late start of domestic automotive electronics enterprises, the low technical maturity of products, and unstable quality, they are not adopted by the vehicle enterprises. Even if its products meet the technical requirements, they also need to go through the strict test and demonstration of foreign manufacturers. The long wait makes the domestic automotive electronics enterprises miss a good opportunity. The high threshold of matching entry conditions makes it difficult for them to obtain the opportunity to match with the complete vehicle enterprises, and it is difficult to improve the technical level through the accumulation of experience in the application of products in automobiles. They can only sell products through the aftermarket, and cannot become OEM suppliers to further expand the scale of products. On the other hand, the imperfect development system and the lack of core technology can not meet the requirements of synchronous development and product competitiveness of the vehicle enterprises.
The factors that restrict the development of China’s automotive electronic products
There is a lack of products with independent intellectual property rights. At the same time, foreign auto parts companies have applied for a large number of patents in China to “encircle”; the purpose is to control China’s auto electronics market.
Independent intellectual property rights are a major factor restricting the development of China’s auto industry. For auto electronics, as a component, there are many constraints to develop products with independent intellectual property rights. Because most manufacturers do not have the conditions for synchronous development with auto companies, they can only be in the imitation stage, not to mention the real development. Foreign parts companies have already seen this. Every year in Germany Major automobile companies such as the United States and Japan have applied for a large number of patents in China, A large area has been implemented in the field of automobile electronics “Enclosure; movement, so even if some domestic enterprises want to develop or have developed their own products, they still have to face the problem of avoiding the patents that have been applied for by foreign countries. There was a manufacturer who developed the rain sensor for detecting rain on the car. At that time, their products had come out. When they wanted to apply for the patent, they found that a German company had applied for the patent of the product in China and applied for the protection of the working principle Protection, such an optical physical principle has been applied for patent protection, which is difficult for this company to avoid, and the product can not enter the market.
2 缺乏对汽车行业质量控制体系满意的供应商，主要零部件受国外限制。https://www.slw-ele.com/
The performance of a product depends on the most unstable component of the product. It can also be said that what level of supplier is used, what level of product will be produced. In terms of automobile electronic products, this problem is more prominent. Often, after the development of an automobile electronic product, there are no problems found in the small batch loading test. However, after the mass production of just a few thousand sets, many problems arise as the times require. The reasons for this are not lack of technology and other factors, but the instability of the working performance of components is the most common. At present, There is a lack of electronic component manufacturers specialized in providing supporting auto electronic products in China. The sources of components used are mainly from two channels. One is to directly purchase components from foreign agents, such as various chips and power tubes; Another channel is to purchase products from domestic electronic component manufacturers, such as resistors, capacitors and transistors. Automotive products are different from other household appliances and application equipment. Automotive electronic products often involve many dynamic parameters, and many factors affect their performance, such as vibration, temperature, humidity, electromagnetic interference, etc. The production of automotive electronic products needs to establish a supporting supply system that can cooperate and communicate with them for a long time, that is, to establish a supporting system for the industry of automotive electronic products, All components should be separated from other electronic products. At the same time, the manufacturers of automotive electronic products should use the quality system of the relevant automotive industry to control the suppliers that support them.
3. The production management system is not perfect, and it is difficult to produce automotive electronic products with stable performance.
Despite the rapid development of China’s automobile industry, many disadvantages of China’s automobile industry have been exposed behind this rapid development. Why are the performance of foreign brands stable? From a technical point of view, they have a strong research and development team, a stable production process control system and a sound logistics system, which is what we lack. The production of automobile electronic products is inseparable from the production of complete vehicles. At present, the control of its production process is still in the period of reference and exploration. Each manufacturer is its own business, and it is difficult to form a feasible system, while the automobile manufacturers are busy with themselves, and have no time to take into account. Without a feasible and strict process control system, it is impossible to produce electronic products with stable quality. Without a supplier of components with stable quality, it is impossible to produce cars with stable performance.
4. Traditional complete machine parts companies lack understanding of emerging automotive electronic products and invest insufficient energy in research and development.
The first impression is that the automobile belongs to a mechanical structure vehicle. It is difficult to link the automobile with electronics, computers and wired and wireless network control with traditional concepts. But now with the innovation of automobile technology, electronic and network technology is developing rapidly in the automobile field. The automobile is no longer a single mechanical product. It has developed into an electromechanical product, In the future, it will not be a single computer control, but a computer network control based on the CAN bus structure. This really needs a process of understanding for the auto parts enterprises mainly based on traditional mechanical parts, but the auto electronics market has been developing rapidly. With the price reduction of cars, the auto parts enterprises will also feel heavy pressure, especially the traditional mechanical parts industry, Some are facing a period of alternate renewal of new products. In this case, it is not allowed to have too much understanding and consideration of time. Now, the production of automotive electronic products is a high-investment and high-profit industry, which requires a lot of energy to really do it. It can not only be limited to the verbal look and call, but also the actual look and try. Automotive electronic products need us to spend more time on in-depth research.
4、 Summary
70% of the innovative technologies of automobiles are concentrated in automobile electronics. The development of China’s automobile industry is bound to drive the rapid development of the entire industry. We should adopt the attitude of introducing, inheriting, learning and innovating the existing foreign mature technologies. Since we have not yet stood on the same platform, we should strive to catch up, because there is no reason to reject advanced technologies and advanced management concepts, Only after fully mastering the new technology of existing mature automotive electronic products and the relevant background of its production and development can we talk about independent innovation; We strongly advocate independent innovation, but independent innovation needs a strong foundation for development. It is the root of the problem to analyze various factors that hinder the development of automotive electronics, overcome these adverse factors, and create an external environment that is truly suitable for the development of automotive electronics. The rapid development of automotive electronics technology is an inevitable trend, and we should not always be a follower. We believe that through our efforts, China’s automotive electronics industry will certainly lead the way in the future.