With many black swan events happening in the world that are affecting chip supply, "we have to be prepared for the long term, which is a new subject," Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of Chinese electric vehicle company Nio, said Monday.
Qin said in a media interview on Monday that many people think of chips as a problem, but in fact chips are a series of problems. For example, there are 80 chips used in the Nio ES8 car, containing 40-50 categories.
The recent shortage is not of computing chips for autonomous driving, but of basic chips, such as weight-sensing chips for seats, he said.
Instead of having a shortage of one chip for several months in the past six months, a different chip has been facing shortages every week, according to Qin.
"There are a lot of black swan events happening in the world that are impacting chip supply. I think we have to be prepared for the long term in this regard, and this is a new subject," he said.
In the big picture of the overall automotive industry development, this is just a blip. China can achieve local production of the vast majority of chips if it makes up its mind, he said.
For certain complex chips with high precision and high arithmetic power, China still faces difficulties in technological breakthroughs, he said.
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