The shortage of automotive chips has recently become a hot topic. Both the United States and Germany hope that the supply chain will increase the output of automotive chips. In fact, with limited production capacity, unless a good price is difficult to refuse, it is almost impossible to urgently strive for chip production capacity. Even the market has predicted that long-term shortage of automotive chips will become the norm. Recently, it has been reported that some car manufacturers have stopped working.
However, whether this will affect other automotive components is also worthy of attention. For example, PCBs for automobiles have recently recovered significantly. In addition to the recovery of the auto market, customers’ fear of shortages of various parts and components has increased inventory, which is also a key influencing factor. The question now is, if automakers are unable to produce complete vehicles due to insufficient chips and have to stop work and reduce production, will major component manufacturers still actively pull goods for PCBs and establish sufficient inventory levels?
At present, the visibility of orders for automotive PCBs for more than one quarter is based on the premise that the car factory will make all-out efforts to produce in the future. However, if the car factory is stuck with the chip and cannot produce it, the premise will change, and the order visibility Will it be revised down again? From the perspective of 3C products, the current situation is similar to the shortage of NB processors or specific components, so that other normally supplied products are also forced to adjust the pace of shipments.
It can be seen that the impact of chip shortage is indeed a double-sided knife. Although customers are more willing to increase the inventory level of various components, as long as the shortage reaches a certain critical point, it may cause the entire supply chain to stop. If the terminal depot really starts to be forced to stop work, it will undoubtedly be a major warning sign.
The automotive PCB industry confessed that based on years of cooperation experience, automotive PCBs are already an application with relatively stable demand fluctuations. However, if there is an emergency, the pace of customer pulls will change greatly. The originally optimistic order prospects will be It is not impossible to completely change the situation in time.
Even if the market conditions seem to be hot before, the PCB industry is still cautious. After all, there are too many market variables and subsequent development is elusive. At present, PCB industry players are cautiously observing the follow-up actions of terminal car manufacturers and major customers, and prepare accordingly before market conditions change as much as possible.