It is the core component of high-speed rail! It also holds the lifeblood of the new energy industry!

Hello everyone, I am the president of the Electric Vehicle Commune.

When it comes to high-speed rail, I believe everyone’s first impression is that it is fast, stable, and safe, and it has firmly established itself as the number one train in the world.

The 1,200-kilometer drive from Beijing to Shanghai takes more than ten hours, but the high-speed rail only takes four and a half hours.

If you were to test everyone, what are the core components of high-speed rail? I believe many people would not be able to imagine it.

It is neither a motor unit that allows the train to reach a top speed of 350km/h and a power of tens of thousands of kilowatts, nor a high-speed rail transmission line network that can continuously provide power, but an IGBT chip that is only the size of our fingernails!

To put it simply, the acceleration speed, maximum speed, power consumption, whether it can start instantly, whether it can drive comfortably, and whether it can stop stably all depend on this small IGBT.

However, since the birth of the first generation IGBT chip in 1988, the core technology of its manufacturing has been firmly in the hands of overseas giants such as Infineon and Mitsubishi. Even national-level high-speed rail train sets have to spend huge sums of money on external procurement.

Take 2008 as an example. As the "infrastructure maniac" quickly laid high-speed rail to every corner of the country, an 8-car train required 152 chips, costing as much as 2 million yuan.

The annual demand for 100,000 chips, rounded up, is 1.3 billion!

Take Japan's Mitsubishi, for example. It has made a lot of money just by monopolizing the fat orders of China's high-speed rail, and even strategically gave up the 2,500-volt low-voltage market. Anyway, China supports us and we have everything to rely on.

So, what is the origin of this small part?

What impact will this core component of the same high-speed rail model have on the new energy industry?

Today, the president will come to briefly talk to you about IGBT.

01. IGBT, what is it?

IGBT, scientific name is insulated gate bipolar transistor, is a composite fully controlled voltage-driven power semiconductor device.

Are you confused? It doesn't matter, listen to the president's explanation:

We know that metals have relatively good electrical conductivity and are conductors; ceramics and plastics have poor electrical conductivity and are insulators.

Materials with conductive properties between the two are semiconductors.

If the conductive properties of semiconductors can be artificially controlled, it can play an unimaginable role in daily life!

Our protagonist today, IGBT, is such a semiconductor with controllable conductivity.

To put it simply, IGBT is a switch that controls the circuit to be on or off.

When it is on, it can withstand tens to hundreds of amps of current;

When it is off, it can withstand voltages of hundreds to thousands of volts.

The biggest feature of IGBT is that at this level of current and voltage, it can switch nearly ten thousand times per second (10kHz)!

As long as pulse width modulation is used, the input current can be easily converted into alternating current at the frequency required by people!

This electricity can be used to drive the AC motor of the high-speed rail. Moreover, it can also change the speed of the motor by changing the frequency of the alternating current, thereby achieving the purpose of changing the speed of the high-speed rail. Isn't it amazing?

IGBT is such a core device responsible for energy conversion and transmission, so it is also called the "CPU" of power electronic devices.

Therefore, it is not surprising that IGBT is ranked second among the country's 16 major technological breakthrough projects during the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" period.

02. How important is IGBT to a new energy vehicle?

Like high-speed rail, IGBT is also the core component of new energy vehicles besides batteries.

This can be seen from the cost:

In addition to the power battery, the second most expensive component to manufacture a new energy vehicle is the IGBT.

As the core of the motor drive system, the cost of IGBT accounts for nearly 10% of the vehicle manufacturing cost!

Not to mention, 30% of the raw material cost of DC charging piles has to be handed over to IGBT, a big money burner.

IGBT can invert the high-power DC power output by the battery into AC power, provide it to the AC motor, and change the speed of the AC motor through frequency conversion and voltage conversion, thereby accurately changing the vehicle's driving speed and acceleration capabilities.

When charging with an AC charging pile, the IGBT also needs to be converted into direct current and the voltage is increased to the voltage of the battery pack before the battery pack can be charged. This also affects the charging efficiency and charging speed of new energy vehicles.

The same goes for DC charging piles, except that the power conversion process is placed in the charging pile.

This is not over yet.

Not only do motor drives use IGBTs, but the generators and air-conditioning parts of new energy vehicles also require IGBTs to work together.

The principle is similar to that of a motor drive system, except that it changes from a high-power inverter to a low-power inverter, and the current will be smaller.

Therefore, the quality of IGBT will directly affect the most intuitive performance of new energy vehicles such as power, efficiency, energy consumption, etc. It is understandable that the cost is so high.

In 2016, the global sales of electric vehicles (including commercial vehicles) were about 2 million, and the cost of purchasing IGBTs was almost US$900 million. On average, one vehicle cost US$450. It is an electric vehicle. The most expensive component in the car besides the battery.

For example, Tesla Model The cost is $650.

If a more complete IGBT module is used, the cost may exceed US$1,500...

Toyota, the world's largest car company by market value, developed hybrid power as early as the 1990s. When making the model, I decided that the core of electronic control, IGBT, must be completely in my own hands.

According to President Akio Toyoda: "IGBT is as important as the engine."

So, Toyota naturally became the only car company in the world that developed and produced IGBTs by itself at that time. It also roped in its good friend and official supplier Denso, so that everyone could make money together.

As early as 2014, Toyota Central Research Institute cooperated with Denso to develop the world's top new IGBT chip.

But this is not enough: Toyota ranks first in the world in sales, but what should we do if we have insufficient production capacity?

As a result, Toyota used Denso to invest in Infineon, the German automotive semiconductor giant and the world's most important automotive-grade IGBT supplier.

Once bound (kidnapped) in this way, you no longer have to worry about supply security issues.

This also verifies from the side how important IGBT is to a car company.

03. The future of IGBT

Currently, worldwide, IGBT has developed to 7.5 generations.

The Electric Vehicle Commune has sorted out the development routes of IGBTs in the past generations for everyone:

The performance of the 1st to 5th generations has been greatly improved compared to the previous generation, but from the sixth generation Since the beginning of the 19th century, it is not an exaggeration to say that toothpaste has been slowly squeezed out. There has not been much rapid growth in technology in the past 20 years.

This is due to material limitations.

The silicon (Si)-based power device drive system used in IGBT has approached or even touched the ceiling of the material itself.

To make further breakthroughs, a new type of material is necessary.

At this time, SiC (silicon carbide) with stronger performance appeared.

SiC devices not only increase the operating frequency by 2.5 times, the blocking voltage by 10 times, and reduce the operating loss by about 80%, but also increase the operating junction temperature from 175°C to 600°C, and the power density also increases. has been further improved.

In human terms, it means that new energy vehicles can have longer battery life and faster charging speeds.

Although SiC is 6 times more expensive than ordinary Si, it still wins the favor of many manufacturers due to its powerful performance.

Tesla Model 3 is the first new energy vehicle to take the initiative.

After using SiC, my waist and legs no longer hurt. It can achieve an excellent range of 664km with only a 75kWh battery pack.

V3 overcharging can replenish 250 kilometers of battery life in just 15 minutes, which is also inseparable from SiC’s support for boost charging.

It can be said responsibly that SiC is the future trend and absolute core of electronic control systems.

But SiC is not without its shortcomings.

SiC’s technical threshold is very high, so production capacity is limited. The high cost also makes it available only for high-end products.

As of now, we are still in the transition period from IGBT to SiC.

Only after technological advancement and cost reduction can it be popularized and applied on a large scale.

04. Domestic current situation

The status of IGBT in China can be said to be equal to that of oil.

According to estimates from the famous investment bank Morgan Stanley, the domestic IGBT market will reach 19.2 billion yuan in 2020, accounting for 35.6% of the world's market share. Among them, 27% of the market share, about 5.1 billion yuan, belongs to new energy vehicles, which can be called a large user of cores.

However, the domestic technology level is still lagging behind and can only contribute less than 20% of production capacity. IGBT chips are still heavily dependent on imports.

At this time, BYD was the first to stand up.

As early as 2003, before BYD started building cars, it had already started laying out IGBTs. In 2005, the R&D team was completed. Let alone electric cars, Toyota is the only company that mass-produces hybrid cars.

There is also an interesting episode here.

BYD, which had nothing to do with the semiconductor industry at the time, took a fancy to Ningbo Zhongwei’s 6-inch semiconductor production line patent.

Taking advantage of Ningbo Zhongwei's insolvency and declaration of bankruptcy, BYD used only 1/10 of its investment that year, or 170 million yuan, to make a robberies acquisition.

Ordinarily, this deal can be called a textbook level from a strategic layout perspective or an economic perspective.

People did not buy it, and the industry was even more critical. Reflected in the stock price, it plummeted by 30% in minutes.

But fortunately, it has talents and production lines. After intensive research, BYD successfully passed the national scientific and technological achievements appraisal and achieved a huge breakthrough in IGBT chips from 0 to 1, breaking the The technological monopoly of international giants.

You also know the rest of the story. At the end of 2018, BYD released its fully independently developed "IGBT4.0" technology, announcing to the world that it, like Toyota, has a world-class complete IGBT industry chain.

This wait is nearly 20 years.

As for the next generation semiconductor material SiC, BYD has also invested heavily in production and research and development. It has been partially applied in BYD Tang EV to improve the charging efficiency of Tang EV. And it is said that SiC will also be fully applied in the upcoming BYD Han. Friends who are paying attention to BYD Han can look forward to Han's battery life performance and fast charging power.

In addition to BYD, other domestic semiconductor companies are not idle either.

At the beginning of this year, Jiaxing Star Semiconductor Co., Ltd., the top ten Chinese company in the global IGBT market share, officially listed on the main board. Coupled with the state-controlled Zhuzhou CRRC Times Electric Co., Ltd., two Chinese companies have squeezed into the top 15 global IGBT market shares.

Other companies are also catching up and trying to close the gap with world-class manufacturers.

The president also believes that more outstanding Chinese companies will emerge among the Top 15 in the future.

Write at the end

On July 13, 1956, Jiefang, the first independent car produced in China, officially rolled off the assembly line. While the whole country is rejoicing, it also heralds the official opening of a new chapter in the domestic automobile industry.

In that era of fuel vehicles, the domestic automobile industry has been hampered by gearboxes and has not developed.

The gearbox, like IGBT, is a core component, and the core technology is also in the hands of others.

Want it? Sorry, buy it with money. The profits will naturally be divided into 30:70.

You are three, others are seven.

In the eyes of the other party, this is just making money on one’s knees, and it’s not a shabby business.

Fast forward to recent years, the automobile industry has entered the era of electrification.

Following the national slogan of “overtaking on corners”, various domestic enterprises have begun to step up independent research and development of three-electric systems.

In addition to BYD, which owns three power supplies and IGBT,

Battery giant CATL has stood up;

Nio, which went public in the United States, has gone out ;

There are Xiaopeng, Ideal, and a large number of supplier companies behind them, chasing in small steps...

Slowly, people discovered that between policies and With the support of technology, Wen Yiwu, you can still stand and make money while standing.

The straighter the waist, the stronger the speech.

I am very much looking forward to the day when domestic new energy vehicles will rely on their own hard power to go abroad and go global, becoming industry leaders.

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This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.