Entering 2024, the global auto parts giants have also released their sales outlook for the new year after successively releasing a new round of layoff plans. Overall, there is a strong atmosphere of pessimism.
This week,French auto parts company Valeo announced that it has lowered its net sales forecast to 2025 due to slower-than-expected growth in the automotive market, especially electric vehicles.
At the same time,How to balance the delicate relationship between the continuous R&D investment of electrification and intelligence, the cost reduction pressure of car companies on the top businessmen, and the uncertainty of market demand is a top priority.
Previously, Valeo said it planned to cut 1,150 jobs globally, including 735 in Europe. At the same time, the company expects to lay off about 13% of its European workforce over the next five years in response to business transformation.
At present, the company is pinning its hopes on the pre-installation fixed-point contracts signed since 2022 to maximize effective conversion, rather than becoming inventory. At the same time, Valeo also plans to control excess capacity in Europe while reducing its dependence on the Chinese market.
According to the plan, Valeo aims to save around 500 million euros per year by 2028 (including the reduction of R&D expenses) and to increase its profit margin from 2.2 percent last year5% to more than 7%.
In fact, improving the profitability of the business was the unanimous goal of Valeo's management during the tenure of several of Valeo's peers. To a certain extent, the KPI of this number is far more important than the speed of business transformation and market share.
At the end of last year, Continental unveiled a new strategy to achieve an adjusted EBIT margin of 8 to 11 percent over the next two to three years, including a series of cost reduction measures.
At the same time, the restructuring of internal operations remains key.
On the basis of the previous spin-off of the power system business, Continental plans to continue to split the automotive display and human-computer interaction business, so as to continue to focus on the first-value business and further reduce R&D costs.
Behind the split, in fact, is also a decline in business competitiveness and market share. For example, taking the Chinese market as an example, in addition to several traditional competitors in China, there are also upstream LCD panel companies such as BOE and Huaxing Optoelectronics in the automotive display industry.
Last year, BOE Varitronix, a subsidiary of BOE, took the lead in releasing the first intelligent cockpit solution "cockpit" 10, including intelligent cockpit large screen solutions, intelligent electronic exterior mirror solutions, and a new generation of 36-inch TFT AR HUD solution.
Due to the reduction of the traditional role of display assembly middleman, BOE Varitronix can directly carry out more in-depth cooperation with car companies in cost control, technology iteration and product solution innovation.
Just at the beginning of February of this year,Continental AG announced that it will lay off nearly 7,150 jobs worldwide by 2025. This includes 380 employees at the software subsidiary Elektrobit.
However,Just two years ago, Elektrobit was recognized by the CEO of Continental as a strategic asset and a key to the transformation of the automotive business to a software-centric one.
StillThis company, which started from traditional software, is obviously unable to adapt to the new rhythm of automotive intelligent software development and market competition. "This is still a typical European company positioning, and many times, the headquarters management is unable to keep up with market changes outside of Europe. Some Elektrobit employees said.
As the main supplier of the traditional and mature AUTOSAR platform, foreign companies such as Elektrobit, ETAS, and Vector have obviously not kept up with the pace of the market, especially in the vehicle cross-domain SOA software platform, which has lagged behind China's local software vendors.
For example,Yingchi TechnologyThe high-performance computing software platform EMOS, including vehicle OS middleware and autonomous driving software platform, can provide a globally unified software platform, mature and reliable commercial components, and an efficient and low-efficiency tool chain to comprehensively solve the development pain points of software-defined vehicles.
At present, the EMOS platform of Yingchi Technology has been newly upgraded to the third-generation kernel "SODA", which has a deterministic SOA architecture and opens up the global architecture of intelligent driving, intelligent cabin, first-class gateway, body and even chassis power. At the same time, it has also officially obtained the designation of an international head joint venture car company, which will be mass-produced and listed in 2025.
As the world's leading auto parts manufacturer, Bosch also warned again in February this year that the newly formed smart mobility division (the restructuring of the original automotive business) may continue to lay off employees and postpone the target profit margin of 7% for one to two years; The reason is that the company's economic environment in 2024 will be bad.
Coincidentally, in January this year, a Bosch spokesman said that it plans to cut 1,200 jobs in the software development department by the end of 2026 due to the slower than expected growth rate of autonomous driving.
However, the opposite is true.
Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research InstituteMonitoring data shows that in 2023, 1,238 ADAS will be delivered as standard for passenger cars in the Chinese market (excluding import and export).060,000 units, of which the delivery of standard equipment for L2 and above intelligent driving increased by 36% year-on-year97%, and the high-end intelligent driving market represented by NOA increased by 189 year-on-year02%。
In addition, in 2023, the actual standard configuration of NOA in urban areas (including unreleased software) will account for 36 percent of the overall NOA89%, and it is expected that there will be a chance to break 50% by 2025. And this part of the players is almost all Chinese car companies and the Chinese top businessmen behind them.
According to the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bosch Group, China is the largest single market for the Group, and it is necessary to make full use of China's local R&D and production capacity to further enhance the company's global competitiveness.
China's auto market is very important, there are many innovative products, and the innovation time is very short, and many products and technologies have appeared in 2 years. "Especially in the intelligent driving track, including new power car companies and Chinese first-class companies have overtaken Bosch in the NOA market.
At present, Bosch China's self-developed high-speed NOA has been officially released on January 20, 2024, and the first batch covers Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and other provinces and cities.
And quite ironically,A few years ago, when Bosch first proposed the evolution diagram from distributed to computational electrical and electronic architecture in the industry, perhaps no one could have predicted that the industry revolution would be the first to start in the Chinese market.
At the beginning of this year, NIO took the lead in announcing that all 2024 models will be upgraded to the ** computing platform ADAM, integrating 1 Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 and 4 NVIDIA Orin X, improving hardware integration and realizing cross-domain computing power sharing.
In addition, last year, Qualcomm also announced a cooperation with PATEO Internet of Vehicles, based on the Snapdragon cockpit platform, focusing on vehicle intelligence, intelligent vehicle connectivity functions, SOA architecture, cockpit integration and multi-domain integration based on the best controller and other fields to expand cooperation and develop solutions.
Under the trend of "cabin and driving integration", PATEO has successively released the "cabin driving and parking integration" solution and the first vehicle computing platform (i.e., Central Computering Module, hereinafter referred to as CCM), which integrates intelligent cockpit functions, advanced assisted autonomous driving, body functions, vehicle control functions, etc.
In addition, during the CES show earlier this year, Nvidia officially announced that Li Auto has selected NVIDIA Drive Thor** in-vehicle computer for its next model.
Behind it is a global tier1 smart car from China - Desay SV. "The integrated design of a single-chip cabin will accelerate the arrival of the first-class computing era. Li Lele, executive vice president of Desay SV, said.
As one of the largest local domain controller solution providers of NVIDIA Orin and Qualcomm third-generation cockpit computing platforms in the Chinese market, in 2022, Desay SV took the lead in releasing the first mass-produced in-vehicle intelligent computing platform - ICP Aurora, realizing the leapfrog technology implementation from "domain control" to "computing".
At that time, ICP Aurora's cockpit convergence products were based on the multi-board integration solution of NVIDIA DRIVE ORIN SOC, NXP S32G (gateway) and Qualcomm SA8295 (cockpit) to create a next-generation computing cluster architecture for the whole vehicle.
"According to the public information of many car companies, this architecture is based on a service-oriented SOA software architecture, which can realize the rapid deployment and adaptation iteration of application software."
In the context of this trend, it is also affecting the pattern of the ** chain. As we all know, in the last round of domain controller upgrade war, the vast majority of foreign-funded tier1s did not get large orders in the Chinese market.
At the same time, China's local ** businessmen continue to make efforts.
Due to the integration of the core functions that originally required multiple ECUs, the development of domain controllers needs to have strong chain integration capabilities," according to Chen Lishun, deputy general manager of NOBO Automobile, which is a prerequisite for enterprises to ensure a first-mover advantage in the next round of competition.
Previously, the cockpit domain controller, body domain controller, and intelligent driving domain controller launched by NOBO Technology have all achieved front-loading mass production on the car, and upgraded products have been launched one after another.
Last year, NOBO launched the world's first INEST Smart Nest 3 equipped with self-developed "cabin and parking integration".0 intelligent cockpit, becoming the first batch of intelligent cockpit solutions based on "cabin and parking integration" in the industry. Next, in 2025, the in-vehicle computing platform One Brain will be launched based on the E/E architecture of the **+ region.
According to the monitoring data of the Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, in 2023, the front installation of passenger cars will be equipped with 173 intelligent driving domain controllers480,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 802%, front-mounted loading rate 822%。Among them, except for Tesla (outsourcing OEM), the vast majority of ** companies are local Chinese ** companies.
In addition, the front of the passenger car is equipped with a cockpit domain controller 349 as standard010,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 11143%, front-mounted loading rate 1653%。Similarly, China's local ** businessmen are the main force.
According to the calculation of the Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, starting from 2024, the cross-domain centralized computing platform will also begin to enter the pre-installation mass production cycle. It is expected that by 2030, the market share will exceed 30%.