The opportunity of the sensor era -- from the rise of China's new energy vehicles

Driven by the transformation of the global automobile industry, cars are becoming cleaner and more energy efficient, and at the same time, more intelligent has become a major trend. Electric power and intelligence are like twin brothers in this revolution, which have emerged at the same time and are advancing simultaneously. According to the official data of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in the first half of 2022, the penetration rate of driving assistance in the domestic passenger car market reached 32.4%, with a year-on-year increase of 46.2%.

China's new energy vehicles will perform well in 2022, not only making great strides in the local market, becoming the highlight of "new consumption formats and new models", but also showing the trend of "going out of the circle". According to the statistics of China Automobile Industry Association, the sales of new energy vehicles will reach 6.887 million in 2022, with a year-on-year growth of 93.4% and a market share of 25.5%; The export sales volume reached 679000 vehicles, up 1.2 times year on year.

The strong advance of automobile intelligence has led to the changes of automobile supply chain, and a number of emerging technology manufacturing enterprises have ushered in new opportunities. For example, in recent years, a number of excellent sensor enterprises have emerged in China to make technology into new products and put them on the vehicle, and then realize mass production at the vehicle specification level. The laser radar enterprise Hesai Technology, the millimeter wave radar enterprise Freitak, and the high-precision positioning company Guide Electronics are among them.

Sensor is a key new component to realize intelligent driving of automobile, and it can be said that it and automobile intelligence drive each other and achieve each other. In a broader context, the application of sensors is not limited to automobiles, it is an important part of the national economy towards "digital intelligence". This year, the country will "accelerate the digital transformation of traditional industries and small and medium-sized enterprises, and strive to improve the level of high-end, intelligent and green" as one of the key tasks in 2023.

"Whenever a system needs to interact with its environment and end users, it needs sensors," explained Pierre Boulay and Pierre Delbos, two analysts of Yole Intelligence, an industry consulting company headquartered in France, in an interview with Chinese media recently.

During the Spring Festival this year, CCTV launched a series of programs "Sensing China", which introduced the application of sensors in China's national economy for the first time. It can be seen in major projects such as high-speed railway, South-to-North Water Transfer, digital agriculture, smart cities and so on. According to the survey of the Prospective Industry Research Institute, the main application fields of the sensor industry include consumer electronics, industrial electronics, medical treatment, environmental protection, aerospace, etc. in addition to automotive electronics.

Compared with foreign countries, the sensor industry in China started late, and only in the 20th century did it begin to explore the field of smart sensors. In 1974, China's first practical piezoresistive pressure sensor was successfully developed. Since the 21st century, especially after entering the era of Industry 4.0, the manufacturing industry has changed from traditional to intelligent, and emerging industries such as the Internet of Things and the mobile Internet have flourished. The relevant national departments have successively issued a series of policies to provide support from scientific research and development, application promotion, industrial development and other aspects. China's smart sensor industry has entered a rapid development stage.

Among them, the vehicle-mounted intelligent sensor industry driven by intelligent driving is an important part of the entire market, and is also an early field of large-scale application.

As one of the strategic and pillar industries of the national economy, the topic of automobile industry has always been concerned. This year, a number of representatives made suggestions and called for further promotion of the development of new energy vehicles and automatic driving. The continuous development of the automobile industry will also continue to inject power into the new parts industry chain, including the on-board intelligent sensor.

"Driven by the trend of automatic driving, Industry 4.0 and production automation, in order to improve the operation efficiency, the terminal system needs to understand the surrounding environment more deeply and accurately. Therefore, we predict that smart cars will be equipped with more and more sensors in recent years." Pierre Boulay and Pierre Delbos analyzed.

The increase in the number of sensors is closely related to the two main trends of vehicle electrification and auxiliary driving. In terms of electrification, almost every new module needs sensors, such as DC/DC converter, main converter, on-board charger, battery management system to monitor current and temperature. These are applicable to pure electric and hybrid vehicles. The development direction of assisted driving is to improve the safety and the automatic driving function. To achieve this, car manufacturers must integrate more cameras, millimeter wave radar and laser radar.

"This is exactly the case in China. We see that many new main engine factories only develop trams (even pure trams), most of which are equipped with advanced safety features." They added.