Tesla's localization speeds up, and the demand for HDI boards is getting higher and higher

In recent years, as Tesla's localization has accelerated, the demand for HDI boards in its supply chain for automotive ADAS, central processing units, and power transmission has become increasingly high. Among them, traditional Taiwanese automotive manufacturers such as Tripod and Xinxing, as Tesla's supply chain manufacturers, have begun to cooperate with customers to ship large quantities of their HDI board products.

In addition to the demand for HDI, Taiwanese manufacturers such as Dingying and Yaohua are currently developing thick copper boards, hard-flex boards, high-frequency radar boards and other technologies, and are also working hard to enter the high-end automotive market.

"Previously, Taiwanese manufacturers generally preferred European and American terminal car manufacturers. Under the influence of the epidemic and Tesla's very high requirements for module technologies such as ADAS, central processing units and power transmission, Taiwanese manufacturers have strengthened their layout in this field to reserve technical strength for future market competition." Industry insiders said.

It is understood that thick copper plates are mainly used for transmission modules, relays and future electric vehicle charging piles; hard-soft boards are the core elements in ADAS applications, and key parts from lens modules to lidars require the use of hard-soft board technology; and high-frequency radar boards are a battleground. Currently, automotive radar boards generally use millimeter-wave products above 24GHz, and even support 77GHz mid-range millimeter-wave radars and 77GHz short-range millimeter-wave radars.

The above-mentioned industry insider said: "Taiwanese manufacturers are still at the forefront in many technical fields. From the perspective of market transformation, Tesla's technology and production capacity layout cannot be ruled out in the future to compete with mainland PCB manufacturers in Tesla's supply chain, and there is a possibility of grabbing the market at a low price." 

Domestic automotive PCB manufacturers are in a difficult situation

According to the global top 100 PCB industry rankings previously released by NT Information, an authoritative global PCB research organization, among the top 100 PCB companies in terms of global revenue in 2019, Taiwanese companies accounted for 7 seats in the top 20, Japanese and Chinese companies each accounted for 4 seats, and Korean companies accounted for 3 seats, of which there were 52 Chinese companies.

It can be seen that under the encouragement of subsidy policies, the mainland PCB industry has shown a flourishing situation in recent years. However, the finalists are not ranked high, except for Jiantao, Dongshan Precision, Shenzhen South Circuit, Shanghai Electric Co., Ltd., etc.

Among them, driven by market demand for 5G, servers, etc., the above four PCB manufacturers still occupy the vast majority of the market share. From the perspective of market segments, as the automotive electronics industry moves towards automation, its automotive PCB output value will also rise accordingly.

Looking back at the previous article, Taiwanese manufacturers have technical and production capacity advantages in the HDI supply of automotive PCBs. In contrast, in the mainland market, the automotive PCB supply chain is relatively weak.

"Since the beginning of this year, in addition to the mainstream demand for smartphones, mainland PCB manufacturers have also seen a significant increase in demand in non-mobile phone markets such as laptops and wearable devices, and the application of HDI boards has increased. However, under the influence of the epidemic and the Huawei incident, some PCB manufacturers have gradually expanded into the automotive PCB market." The above-mentioned industry insider analyzed.

It is understood that Shanghai Electric Co., Ltd. is the only designated first-tier supplier of Tesla PCB, and then Shenghong Technology actively deployed automotive PCB and entered Tesla's supply chain.

Another PCB manufacturer, Sunda Technology, stated on an interactive platform that it indirectly supplies Tesla with small batches of automotive electronic PCB boards, but the current volume is relatively small.

Overall, from the perspective of technology, production capacity, and cost advantages, Taiwanese manufacturers are more competitive in the expansion and layout of automotive PCBs. When the global auto market is sluggish, the price competition in the low- and mid-end automotive PCB market will be more fierce, and the high-end automotive PCB market will still be the main direction for large manufacturers to layout in the future. Based on Tesla's technical requirements for automotive PCB modules, it is a long and difficult road for mainland PCB manufacturers to get a share of this field.