On July 19, 2017, the 4th "Symposium on Hot Issues of Electric Vehicles" was held in Zhuzhou, Hunan Province. This Symposium focuses on "New Energy Vehicle Power Electronics Technology".
China Bus Network learned from the scene that relying on breakthroughs and innovations in key technologies to improve core competitiveness has become a consensus in the field of new energy vehicles. Power electronics is the key technology of new energy vehicles, and its technological progress affects the new energy automobile industry to move towards the direction of electrification and intellectualization. Xu Hui, Vice President of Automotive Electronics in Greater China, Infineon Technology (China) Co., Ltd., gave the following speech:
Today, I would like to share with you briefly how we can look at the development of new energy vehicles and the coordination of power electronics related components from the perspective of semiconductors. First of all, why should we talk about semiconductors? Infineon is a leading semiconductor company in the world. First, why should we talk about semiconductors? I think at the beginning, Mr. Ouyang has laid a good foundation for me. Mr. Ouyang just said that the hardest thing to do is to make chips and IGBT is the key component of inverters. Why do we talk about semiconductors? It is because we can see that the greatest driving force of innovation in all industries is electrification and electronization. How to promote the development of electronization is ultimately achieved by technology. The foundation of technology is semiconductors. Without semiconductors, the realization technology will not be achieved. There is a way to integrate, we as the semiconductor industry must go to the forefront of technology, to be able to achieve semiconductor technology, so we must go to the forefront.
From the point of view of Infineon, we can see the development of the whole automotive industry, from electrification and intellectualization. We think these four major trends are the greatest. Today, the most important new energy vehicle we are in must be developed from energy saving and emission reduction to the development of the whole automotive hybrid to pure electric. A trend is also a trend that must be developed. In addition to this, now you are also very enthusiastic to hear of an automatic driving, to follow-up online vehicles, the ultimate environment we must do information security prevention, so we think that the four directions must be the ultimate trend of future automobile development.
In fact, the implementation and implementation of the entire electronic system architecture, in fact, this principle is relatively simple. From the sensing we all know, we take autopilot as an example. In fact, we all know that the core component of autopilot is sensors. We see a sensor sensing signal. If there is a pedestrian, there is a car in front of us, and the signal is transmitted to our controller, we will make a judgment. This is the brain of our car. In this judgment, we will make a judgment whether we want to brake, accelerate, or turn, and ultimately to our actuators, whether we want to step on the brake or do it. Turning around, the whole principle is quite simple. Why is it so complicated? In fact, the trend of our market still needs the electrification and intellectualization of our automobiles. That is, we need to avoid accidents, we need to drive automatically, and we need networked automobiles. But the most crucial point is that, as Xu always mentioned just now, how can we achieve reliability and safety? This is our most basic principle. If the car is unsafe and unreliable, all these are fantastic, so we must go back to the most basic car safety, from the system to the whole car.
Back to the topic of new energy vehicles, we have done some analysis. In fact, new energy vehicles have higher requirements on electronic devices and systems than traditional vehicles. We have done average analysis, which may be 3-4 times higher than the performance requirements of traditional vehicles in terms of the basis of components, because in fact, new energy vehicles own all the new energy vehicles. The system requirements, including his working time and cycle, are longer than the traditional car. The traditional car is actually parked there when you are not driving, but the new energy car may be charging or preparing for charging, so in fact, the electric car needs more high-performance components. The requirements of the whole system may be higher. Many components and systems have to reach a certain level. The requirements of the whole new energy vehicle are higher. Therefore, we should pay more attention to the design of the whole system to meet the requirements of ISO26262.
Speaking of components back to our topic today is the theme of IGBT. I also have a feeling just now. The topic of IGBT mentioned by Ouyang teacher, in fact, the technology of IGBT itself may be able to be studied by everyone, but in fact, one of the core of IGBT is the accumulation of experience. In fact, we have been in Infineon since 90 years or so. Starting research and development and production of IGBT, our first series of IGBT products were launched in 1993. Today, it has been more than 25 years. We have also seen that we have made many products of different generations. One of our larger devices is the IGBT module that we brought to the Three Gorges Project. We really do. The automobile module was launched in 2007, so it has a history of 10 years. So we think that the accumulation of this experience and the ability to understand the needs of the whole system are very important for the core components. Today, we launched the latest automobile product series two years ago in 2015. We think we are constantly updating some technologies to improve energy efficiency.
In addition, this power device, in fact, we want to provide the entire industry chain, not just modules, so from our point of view, there are actually three types of customers to choose, first of all, bare chip, is our wafer, and separate devices, such as Tesla, we also support such customers, after that. Talking about the whole module, in fact, the core advantage of the module is that it is highly integrated. We have integrated a lot of problems in the module that need not be considered or worried about in the system, so in fact, from the perspective of customers or car manufacturers, you can choose freely according to your own system integration needs. Choose the degree of integration you need, of course, the integration of modules is high, and the requirements of the system are relatively low. If you do your own packaging or choose separate mode, in fact, many systems will consider these functions that the module has assumed, so these are based on your system's considerations. In addition, we think that follow-up, just a guest mentioned that double-sided water cooling is DSC products, we believe that the follow-up DSC products will also be used, the need for the whole system design to take into account more heat dissipation and other higher needs.
When it comes to IGBT, we must talk about the wafer of IGBT. Why does the wafer achieve 8 inches, 6 inches and 12 inches, and why does it become bigger and bigger? When it comes to wafer, there are two requirements, one is the size of wafer and the other is power density. Infineon is currently the only manufacturer of 12 inches wafer. First, economic benefits, the bigger the wafer, the more chips can be cut, the lower the cost. In terms of supply, when electric vehicles reach 2 million and 3 million units per year in the future, our output will be insufficient. Larger wafers will produce more wafers. Thinner wafers require higher technology, which can increase their temperature-saving temperature and power density. This is a necessary trend. We also recommend that we do so. Wafer manufacturers will consider larger wafers, from 6 inches to 8 inches, followed by 12 inches of conversion.
What are we doing at Infineon? We have been laying out new energy vehicles for several years. We know that the semiconductor industry may know that the core demand of the semiconductor industry is that it needs a lot of investment. So our factory investment is quite large. This year, we have added nearly 100 million euros of investment to prepare for new energy. We are doing two things in the follow-up climb of automobiles. One is the production guarantee of multi-factories. After the earthquake in Japan in the past few years, we found that there is a great risk in the production of single factories. So all our factories now have two factories for power devices and microprocessors, which can guarantee the supply. Safety.
Another thing is to increase production capacity. We have already produced all wafers in the Dredden plant in Germany. We will produce 200 mm wafers in Kulim, Malaysia. Thirdly, we have increased a lot of production capacity in the back packaging to meet the requirements of the rear automobile module.
Finally, many guests also talked about silicon carbide. In fact, there are still some bottlenecks in the realization of silicon carbide. One is that the efficiency of its own production and the whole production process need to be improved to reduce costs. From another point of view, at present, from the perspective of automobile, there are few real systems that can be fully used and full of carbon. The requirement of silicon carbide device can balance the increase of cost. At present, we may see that the price of silicon carbide is about three times that of silicon carbide product. So you need this device or system to balance the difference of cost before you can use this silicon carbide product. Product, so we think that the first application of silicon carbide in automobiles should be DC/DC application, then it may enter the real main inverter, of course, this is a process, so we are also slowly accelerating the development of our own silicon carbide products, hoping to cooperate with various customers to speed up the process.
As far as our products are concerned, our silicon carbide products are the same as silicon products. The way from our wafers to separate MOSFETs and to modular supply is unchanged, so we hope to see more customers join us in the trial and development of silicon carbide.
Finally, in fact, I think semiconductor industry has a greatest feeling in recent years. Actually, we need to pull the whole industry chain. In fact, all of the experts, factories, first-class suppliers and second-class suppliers here are our customers of Infineon. We actually see many different customers and not. With the understanding of experts, we hope to do our best to promote the development of new energy vehicles, and discuss with more friends how to support the development of new energy vehicles can accelerate.
