As the electric vehicle market is developing rapidly, new energy vehicle power electronics see a lucrative development opportunity
According to EV Sales, the global electric vehicle sales volume soared by 249% year-on-year to 392,000 units in April 2021. As the electric vehicle market is developing rapidly, new energy vehicle power electronics see a lucrative development opportunity. New energy vehicle power electronics generally include motor controllers (including inverters) and automotive power supplies (automotive chargers and DC/DC).
I. Motor Controller Market
1. BYD leads the highly competitive motor controller market
Benefiting from the rapid development of China's local new energy vehicle brands, Chinese local motor controller vendors led by BYD have obvious advantages in the motor controller market. In 2020, BYD still ranked first with a market share of 13.6%; among the top 10 companies, 7 are Chinese local vendors, except two foreign companies Tesla and Nidec as well as UAES, a Sino-foreign joint venture.
2. Motor controllers are developing towards integration and high voltage
Electronic control is developing towards integration, and three-in-one drive system will become the mainstream
Motor controllers gradually develop from a single function to multi-functional integration, and the integration of motors and electronic control has become a major trend, among which three-in-one electric drive system will become the mainstream. In 2020, China's passenger car three-in-one electric drive system shipments exceeded 500,000 sets, accounting for about 37% of motor controller shipments.
At present, most companies still focus on two-in-one electric drive system, and companies including Bosch, BYD, Inovance, and JJE have launched three-in-one electric drive system. In 2020, Tesla, BYD, XPT and Nidec together accounted for 82.1% of the total sales volume.
The DriveONE three-in-one electric drive system launched by Huawei has the peak power density of 3kW/kg, marking the highest level in the industry, higher than Bosch eAxle which boasts 1.67 kW/kg. In the future, with the efforts of local vendors represented by Huawei and BYD, the gap between local companies and international vendors will gradually narrow.
SiC motor controllers are expected to replace IGBTs
As the core components of motor controllers, IGBT modules account for about 45% of the total cost. In 2020, the global new energy vehicle IGBT module market valued approximately USD850 million. However, high-priced automotive IGBT modules have severely compressed the profit margins of electronic control companies and even automakers.
Compared with silicon-based IGBT power devices, SiC power devices feature advantages such as smaller size, lower weight, higher power density, longer cruising range, less controller loss, better thermal conductivity, and higher temperature resistance. Therefore, vendors represented by Delphi and BYD have begun to deploy SiC motor controllers which are expected to replace IGBTs in the future.
II. Automotive Power Supply Market
In Chinese new energy vehicle power supply market, there are mainly four types of players:
Foreign-funded companies mainly target joint venture automakers, while local companies support independent brands. Thanks to the relatively higher sales volume of local new energy vehicles, local companies have a certain advantage in the automotive power supply market. In 2020, there were 6 local companies among the top 10 companies in Chinese new energy vehicle charger OBC market, with the combined market share of 66%.
At present, automotive power supply products are mainly developing towards integration, high power, and bidirectional style.
(1) Integration: By integrating DC/DC, OBC, motors, electronic control devices, etc., the space occupied by the automotive power supply can be reduced, the size of the circuit board, the assembly cost as well as the BOM and PCB cost can be lowered.
(2) High-power: With longer cruising range and higher electrified capacity of electric vehicles, high power like 10kW, 20kW or more will become the mainstream, which is mainly accomplished by the three-phase AC technology. At present, BYD and Shinry have already deployed in this field.
(3) Bidirectional style: Bidirectional DC/DC features high efficiency, small size, and low cost. At the same time, it can also output battery power to the outside, effectively improving power utilization. Two-way automotive chargers can output the electric energy of the battery to realize vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-load, and vehicle-to-grid charging.
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