From Yidingfeng's perspective, China's automotive electronics industry has a breakthrough path

Recently, Yidingfeng successfully completed its Series A financing, and a good friend of mine asked me to write about this topic - at the same time as the financing was completed, the core controller products of the power domain also began to break through.

Tianjin Yidingfeng Power Technology is a long-established company that has grown out of the last round of electric vehicle development. Its Series A financing was jointly invested by Zhongsheng Huipu, Huitongda Network and original shareholder Yiwei Lithium Energy.

I personally have the following judgments:

● After being suppressed for a long time, China’s ECU has no obvious cost shortcomings in this round of development of new energy vehicle power ECU; after the functional development covers many requirements of various domestic car companies, it has the potential to serve global car companies.

● With the arrival of China's chip shortage, in the A00 and logistics vehicle fields, a large number of domestic replacement chips are handed over to domestic automotive electronics Tier 1 to complete; it is relatively difficult to let foreign Tier 1 use domestic chips.

● In the long run, China's automotive electronics Tier 1, in a sense, actually needs to include relatively comprehensive software development capabilities and hardware foundry capabilities and lower its profile; in the era of Tier 1 software and hardware deconstruction, it is possible to survive in the era of low gross profit margins.

Part 1. Yidingfeng

Yidingfeng may be unfamiliar to everyone. It is in the wave of electrification. Several founders in Tianjin are from the China Automotive Technology Research Center. They focus on the core technology and their main product is the core controller of new energy vehicles. The core team is from the core members of the project team of the "Pure Electric Passenger Vehicle Power and Control" direction of the national "Major Electric Vehicle Project" for three consecutive five-year plans. They focus on the core technology research and development of VCU, BMS, and DCU in the field of power control of new energy vehicles.

The main products have entered the supporting systems of core enterprises in the domestic and foreign automobile industry chain, such as Stellantis (formerly France's PSA), VALEO, SAIC-GM-Wuling, Dongfeng Xiaokang, Chongqing Jinkang, China National Heavy Duty Truck Group, and FAW Fawer. Especially the first two, we can also see the growth path of this round of Chinese companies, which started with growing by installing vehicles under their own brands, then entering the joint venture system and then expanding to the global system. The development cost of Global Tier 1 in new fields is very high.

▲Figure 1. Yidingfeng’s main customers

From the perspective of vehicle controller development, it is necessary to have a functional safety development process based on ISO 26262, software development based on the AUTOSAR architecture, and vehicle control technology development capabilities that include full-process requirements analysis, system design, hardware design, software design, testing and calibration, etc. From the perspective of production capacity, it already has the production capacity of 400,000 control units.

Part 2: Domestic alternative ECU

There is a very interesting point in Yidingfeng's design. Its controller products have cooperated with many domestic vehicle manufacturers to take the lead in realizing the mass production and supply of domestically produced chips VCU. In the environment of tight chip supply, it has achieved supply guarantee for vehicle manufacturers.

The replacement of domestic chips for new energy vehicles, especially China's independently developed MCU chips entering the vehicle power control industry technology advancement, is of strategic significance.

summary:

In 2021, against the backdrop of tight chip supply, Yidingfeng achieved a year-on-year growth of 45%, and the supply of VCU and other controller products is expected to more than double in 2022. I hope Yidingfeng will get better and better, and the founders will continue to accelerate their progress and continue on the road to becoming a leader in core controller products in the power domain of new energy vehicles in China.