AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)03/22 Report--

A fire broke out at the Japanese semiconductor manufacturer Renesas's plant in Nako, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan on March 19, causing car companies that had stopped or cut production because of a shortage of semiconductor chips to face a greater crisis.

According to the Nikkei Chinese website, the fire broke out at the Renesas Nake factory at 02:47 local time on the 19th, and the fire broke out in the N3 building in the factory area. the production line that undertakes the mass production of cutting-edge products and supports 300mm diameter semiconductor wafers has been damaged. After investigation, it is preliminarily determined that the cause of the fire is that the electroplating equipment on the first floor of N3 building caught fire due to excessive current, because the heat resistance of the shell and plating tank of the equipment is relatively low, and if the current is too large, there will be a fire crisis. however, the cause of excessive current has not been determined yet.

Smoke from the fire spreads into the dust-free workshop, and even a small return to the city can damage the wafer. In response, Renesa Electronics said in a statement on March 21 that the Nake plant, which was suspended due to the fire, estimated that it would take about a month to restart production, and that if the damaged equipment could not be replaced within a month, it would mean that the restart time would be further delayed. Shibata Yingli, president of Renesas, said at a press conference that "efforts will be made to restart production within a month", but said there was "local uncertainty", suggesting the risk of delay and concern that the shutdown would have a "huge impact on semiconductor supply".

Data show that Renesa Electronics, which was formed by the merger of Hitachi Semiconductor Department and Mitsubishi Click Semiconductor Department in 2003, is currently one of the four largest semiconductor chip suppliers in the world, and has won the world's highest market share in the fields of mobile communications, automotive electronics and PC/AV. In terms of 2020 revenue, Renesas's global market share is 17.0%, second only to NXP Semiconductor, and mainly supplies to Toyota, Honda, Nissan and other car companies, of which Toyota is one of its largest customers. 6.6% of its revenue comes from Toyota.

Toyota is currently assessing the changes brought about by the fire at the Renesas plant. "although it will not be affected immediately, if [the shutdown] reaches a month, production may be affected after April when stocks begin to run out," Honda said. Nissan is adjusting the production schedule of its vehicles. As of March 22, Nissan has cancelled weekend production plans for the new Qijun and NV business trucks, and the production schedule of the new Loulan, Sima and Leaf has also been adjusted.

As a major semiconductor chip manufacturer in the world, Renesa Electronics stopped production of semiconductors because of the fire, which is bound to affect the vehicle production of global car companies. In February this year, a cold wave hit Texas in the southern United States, which led to the shutdown of factories in NXP Semiconductor of the Netherlands and Infineon Technology of Germany. NXP Semiconductor announced that its factories in Texas would lose about a month of production. Infineon Technology said it was not expected that production would return to its original level until June.

At present, a number of car companies, including Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Fiat Chrysler and Volvo, have announced that they will reduce or stop production due to the shortage of semiconductor chips. The worldwide shortage of automotive chips in 2021 is expected to reduce production by 2 million to 4.5 million vehicles, according to research by independent asset research firm Bernstein Research.

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