With the stagnation of vehicle panel shipments, how can autonomous driving drive recovery and growth?

 According to a report from IHS Markit on October 16, global sales of TFT LCD panels used in automotive displays will decline for the first time in 2019, falling to 156 million units after 10 consecutive years of high growth. However, driven by the emergence of self-driving cars, the automotive panel market is expected to resume growth in 2020 .

Hiroshi Hayase, senior director of small and medium-sized displays at IHS Markit, said that after the 2008 financial crisis, the TFT LCD automotive panel market for automotive displays entered the fast lane. Although the shipment of automotive panels in 2009 was only about 18 million pieces, after 10 consecutive years of growth, the automotive panel market size reached 162 million pieces in 2018, with an annual growth rate of 9.4%. Among them, central control display panels are the largest application market, with shipments of 78.3 million pieces, instrument screen displays are 60.8 million pieces, and other applications are 22.4 million pieces.

However, the growth of automotive panel shipments stagnated in 2019. The most critical reason is that the United States increased tariffs on Chinese cars and related components, causing the market to face its first recession in 10 years. IHS Markit estimates that the shipment of automotive panels in 2019 will be about 156 million pieces, a decline of about 5% compared with 2018.

Hiroshi Hayase also said that the economic downturn has had a negative impact on panel manufacturers. It was originally expected that the automotive market would continue to grow in 2019. However, with an optimistic outlook, the demand for automotive displays is expected to resume growth after 2020. This is mainly because in the next few years, self-driving cars and new safety monitoring functions will require each car to be equipped with more displays. On the other hand, new self-driving cars will also stimulate demand in the automotive market, thereby increasing the demand for automotive panels.

At present, the in-vehicle display market has a very obvious feature: technological intelligence and integrated large screen. From Tesla to BYD, and then to various new car-making forces. The large screen in the car center console seems to have become a standard configuration at present, which actually also implies a development trend of in-vehicle display: large screen and technological advancement.

It is worth noting that the development trend of in-vehicle displays is moving towards the direction of consumer electronic product displays, but it also has different requirements. Car manufacturers have higher requirements for the reliability, high cold, high temperature, and stability of display screens, and in-vehicle displays also need to meet the requirements of vehicle regulations.