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component shortage Electronic Components

Automotive electronics market set to grow

Automotive Electronics Market set to grow

With vehicles getting smarter, more connected and more autonomous, the automotive electronics market looks set to soar.

Future growth in numbers

Back in March, Precedence Research predicted the automotive electronics market would hit around US$ 640.56 billion by 2030.

Then, in July, Global Market Insights released research predicting the automotive electronics market would hit around US$ 380 billion by 2027.

Interestingly, measured across the same period, both research reports (which are independent) predict a similar growth pattern. Global Market Insights predicts a 6% CAGR, while Precedence Research predicts a CAGR of 7.64% over a 3-year longer period.

With two separate reports indicating significant annual growth. The automotive electronics market looks set to boom. But wait, there’s more.

A 9.3% CAGR is expected in the automotive electronics market by 2030, according to research by P&S Intelligence. They predict slightly less growth than Precedence Research to 2030, at US$ 615.3 billion (versus $640.56 billion).

Growth factors

There are approximately 1,400 chips in a typical vehicle today. Which each chip housing thousands of components on a semiconductor wafer, creating integrated circuits that power computing, memory, and a host of other tasks.

Those are just the chips.

Cars have thousands of other electronic components, including passive, active and  interconnecting electronic components. From batteries, sensors and motors, to displays and cameras. Oh, and everything is connected.

All told, a typical car today has more than 50,000 electronic components that enable features like in-car Wi-Fi, self-parking technology, adaptive headlights, semi-autonomous driving technology, keyless entry, and powered tailgates.

However, cars are getter smarter and more advanced. Electronic components today make up around a third the cost of a car, which will increase over time as more sophisticated and greater numbers of components are used.

Smarter cars need more components  

The future of cars involves electrification, autonomous and self-driving technologies, hyperconnectivity, Internet of Things, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, biometrics and a whole host of next-generation technologies.

How will these be enabled? With electronic components.

Let’s take electrification as an example. An electric car handbook will tell you an electric car has a motor, a battery, an on-board charger, and an Electronic Control Unit (ECU) that controls one or more of the electrical systems or subsystems in the vehicle. Together, these let you drive around, charge, and pop to the shops.

In-between these systems, are hundreds of thousands of electronic components that make them work. You see, an Electronic Control Unit is a single component, containing thousands of smaller components, each performing a critical role.

The automotive electronics market is set to soar because cars and other vehicles will need more components with electrification and next-gen technologies. Sometimes, things can be simple to explain, and this is one of those times.

Meeting demand

The electronics industry is facing a global chip and electronic component shortage which is expected to last 2-3 years. As demand for automotive electronics soars, shortages look very likely for certain components like CPUs and memory.

The solution for many companies will be to use an electronics component distributor, to fill gaps in the supply chain and keep things moving.

Electronic component distributors like Lantek can source hard-to-procure components because we have relationships with the best suppliers in the industry. Contact us today with your inquiries at sales@lantekcorp.com or call 1-973-579-8100

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Electronic Components Semiconductor

Why are semiconductors so important to so many industries?

Is There a Passive Component Shortage?

Why are semiconductors so important to so many industries?

The semiconductor chip has done more to connect the world than any other technology, but why is it so important to so many industries?  

Semiconductors are materials used to make semiconductor wafers. Which potentially millions of components are fabricated, to create an integrated circuit (IC), creating a single chip that can be used for computation or other tasks.

Semiconductors are important to so many industries because they are an essential electronic component. Whether we are talking about the semiconductor material (silicon, silicon carbide) or the chips that perform tasks.  

To understand why semiconductors are so important to so many industries, let’s take a step back and clarify what a semiconductor actually is.

What is a semiconductor?

A semiconductor is a material that partly conducts current, somewhere between that of an insulator and a conductor (hence the name semi-conductor).

A semiconductor chip is an integrated circuit (IC) formed on a wafer of silicon, consisting of the semiconductor material that manages the flow and control of current, and components like transistors and resistors to create the circuit.

When talking about semiconductors in relation to chips, we use the names “chips” or “semis’” because these names are more accurate for describing circuits laid down or grown to do computation or other tasks like memory.

Why are semiconductors so important?

In 1947, the first semiconductor transistor was made. Engineers quickly realized that manufacturing transistors out of silicon allowed them to fit on a microchip, which opened the gates to all the electronics you use today.

Without semiconductor chips, modern electronics would not exist. These inconspicuous, tiny components replaced tubes in electronics in the 1970s, laying the foundation for every electrical device used today, including the screen you’re looking at.

Today, all modern electrical devices use semiconductor chips, from home ovens to smartphones and cars. Billions of semiconductors are manufactured each year, and they are getting smaller and smarter with each generation.

Powering our smart, connected world

As we discussed earlier, semiconductor chips are single electronic components consisting of thousands or millions of electrical components, enabling functions like computation, memory, oscillation, switching, logic, amplification, and so on.

Without this single component with an integrated circuit, there would be no way to efficiently make the circuits we need to create smart, connected devices in their current form. Quite literally, chips are the reason you are reading this.

With an insatiable appetite for semiconductor chips, it’s a good job the material we use to make the wafers – silicon – is naturally abundant.

Today, most chips are built on silicon, which makes up 27.7% of the earth’s crust, or silicon carbide, a compound tweaked for performance.

However, our demand for chips is outstripping supply. There is a global semiconductor shortage underway affecting all industries, with the automotive industry hardest hit due to a perfect storm that has been building for years.

Electronic components distributors like Lantek are helping supply meet demand, while the semiconductor industry battles to make more chips.

If you are having difficulty finding those hard-to-find and obsolete electronic components. Get in touch with our team today by emailing sales@lantekcorp.com or call 1-973-579-8100