My Age of Investment

  Chapter 1049 IGBT Chips and Power Semiconductors

"The motor drive control system directly determines the performance of pure electric vehicles such as climbing, acceleration and maximum speed. It is mainly composed of inverters, drivers, power modules, controllers and other major components. The most core component is the inverter. And controller.

  Let’s talk about the inverter first. Its function is to invert the DC power output by the battery into three-phase AC power, which is mainly composed of IGBT insulated gate bipolar transistor power modules. "

  Peter Rawlinson looked at Xia Jingxing, "When Roadster was delivered, because of the skyrocketing cost, it decided to temporarily raise the price. The cost was IGBT, right?"

  Xia Jingxing nodded slightly and sighed, “Yes, Roadster’s electric drive control system was originally authorized by ACPropulsion. It uses a single-tube IGBT solution and is equipped with 36 4th-generation IGBT automotive chips provided by IR.

  But in the actual use process, we found that the inverter performance is a bit low, only suitable for use as an ordinary electric car, so this is also one of the important reasons for Roadster to stop selling, there are too many defects, not perfect. "

Peter Rawlinson smiled and said: "Compared with Roadster, the design of ModelS is very bold and advanced. The new inverter plans to triple the number on the basis of Roadster, that is, it is equipped with 96 IGBT chips, and it is the sixth-generation product of IR. .

  At present, IR's sixth-generation products have not yet stabilized mass production. Their automotive chip department has been in contact with us recently, and hope we will give them some time.

During the test, IR engineers told us a terrible test result, because 16 chips in parallel need to handle a total of more than 200 kilowatts of power. As long as one or two chips are switched in advance or delayed by a few microseconds, it will directly cause it. It was burned out, which caused the safety switch to trip, and a car driving at high speed suddenly braked..."

  Xia Jingxing frowned more and more, and then comforted herself that the technology of the automobile industry is not so easy to break through. If it is so easy, it will not take nearly 20 years for Tesla to fully grow up in the previous life.

  Straubel slowly said: “I contacted Infineon and wanted their automotive chip department to design a new IGBT solution for us.

  Their customers are BMW, Mercedes-Benz and other mainframe manufacturers, so they are somewhat indifferent to us, far less enthusiastic than the people of IR.

  The company itself is limited by the company's size and technology, and the development of solutions is very slow. "

  Straubel pointed to the prototype car in front of him, "Currently it is equipped with IR's fifth-generation IGBT chip products, and it uses Roadster's solution.

  If we change to our newly designed solution, the performance of ModelS will rise by more than one grade. "

  Xia Jingxing kicked the tire of the prototype car, "So you call it a prototype car?"

  Straubel and other executives lowered their heads in shame.

  At this time, on the contrary, Peter Rawlinson, who has always felt that the prototype car is not good or bad, stood up and explained: “Dylan, this is not only a problem for us, but also a problem for the entire supply chain and industrial technology system.

  The actual situation is that we have come up with an amazing design plan, but the supplier cannot complete it. "

   "This is not a reason to shirk responsibility."

  "We are not shirking responsibility, but are stating a fact."

  Xia Jingxing glanced at Peter Rawlinson. He finally knew why Musk could not tolerate this guy anymore. It is estimated that Musk could not come to the stage because of frequent collisions.

Although he respects talents, he will never feel soft when it is time to beat. Xia Jingxing said in a deep voice, "Do you think I'm talking about the problem with this prototype? It's because you have clearly discovered the problem, why don't you actively solve it? ?"

Speaking of this, Xia Jingxing’s face gradually cooled. He just drove the prototype car and felt pretty good, but the car that was actually on the road would travel tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of kilometers. If there is any safety accident, such as a sudden break on the highway. Electricity causes the car to be rear-ended, and Tesla's reputation will become as bad as it was in the previous life.

  Although he knew that this might be unavoidable, he subconsciously hated all risks and uncontrollable factors.

  Peter Rawlinson said: "We are actively communicating with IR, but it will take time."

  "Is it just communication? Why can't we send engineers to participate in research and development together in the past, and accelerate the introduction of perfect solutions?"

  Peter Rawlinson was stunned, and then replied: "We are short of manpower. We send some people out, and a lot of work has stalled."

  "Then continue to recruit people. Some not-so-important tasks should be stopped first. The difficulties of IGBT must be overcome first. I don't want to see what happened to Roadster repeats itself."

Xia Jingxing’s words are very heavy. This is because he knows the importance of IGBTs. This thing is called the CPU of the power electronic device, which occupies more than one-third of the cost of the electronic control system and occupies the cost of the entire vehicle. 10%, among all vehicle components, the cost is second only to the battery, ranking second.

  If charging piles are deployed in the future, IGBT is also a core component, and the cost can account for 20%.

  In addition, IGBT, as the mainstream device of new power semiconductors, is also widely used in communications, consumer electronics, new energy vehicles, high-speed rail, subway, aerospace, defense and military industry, photovoltaic power generation, home appliances and many other fields.

At present, China is still very backward in this area. It can be called a blank. BYD only entered this field three years ago. Now it has not even released its first product and is still engaged in research and development. At this time, the domestic high-speed rail and subway are equipped with All of the high-voltage IGBT devices are imported from Germany, Japan, and the United States.

Infineon, which was spun off from the German Siemens Semiconductor Division, is the dominant player in the power semiconductor field. In the future, it will acquire the company IR (American International Rectifier Company) that cooperates with Tesla, occupying more than one-third of the global market share. , And half of the market share in China.

Many industries under the Fuxing Industry need to use IGBT chips. If Xia Jingxing has no idea about this industry, it is fake, but Fuxing Semiconductor has just started on the road, and it will take some time before the mass production of chips, let alone win tes Pulled orders for car-level chips.

  If you have an idea, you can only slow it down temporarily.

  Peter Rawlinson nodded towards Xia Jingxing, and actually accepted the latter’s suggestion, which was rare to refute.

   "What's the problem, don't hide it, let's talk about it together."

  Starting a new energy vehicle is a life of nine deaths! Xia Jingxing has also developed a big heart now and can bear it.

  "In addition to the inverter, another core component of the electronic control system is the controller.

  The controller can be regarded as the brain of the electronic control system, including the body controller, battery management and charge management controller, motor control and drive board, car infotainment and other modules, and will add automatic driving modules in the future.

Each module will report its own operating status or alarm information to the vehicle information module, so that the operating status of the vehicle can be seen through the display on the car, such as vehicle speed, kinetic energy recovery, battery power, automatic driving function, and alarm information display …"

  Xia Jingxing listened carefully. The difference between Tesla and traditional fuel cars is that many function control buttons are integrated into the central control screen, that is, the car computer.

  The technical change behind this is the use of a centralized electrical and electronic architecture.

  The changes in the architecture have enabled Tesla to divide the electronic control unit ECU according to the body, chassis, power, infotainment, etc., on the one hand, and realize cross-functional connection through the central control gateway to strengthen the collaboration between various components.

  At the same time, it also has a very important function, which can update the on-board system and software through OTA over-the-air download technology. The update content mainly includes power, entertainment, body, chassis, etc.

  "For the controller, we are currently using the chip provided by DZ Instruments, and the performance is not bad.

  However, in terms of software R&D capabilities, we still lack. Let alone research in the direction of autonomous driving, even in-vehicle entertainment systems can't be done. "

  Xia Jingxing waved his hand to Peter Rawlinson, “Don’t worry about the car entertainment system. Fuxing Mobile and Android will launch an interesting product next, and related applications and developers will arrange it.

  You only need to focus on the research and development of on-board functional software such as power, body, and chassis. "

  (End of this chapter)