While evolving from the era of ICE cars to the era of BEVs toward the era of autonomous driving vehicles, the demand of chips from the automotive industry will keep increasing; Especially in the situation that the chip shortage around the world since the past 2 years will remain for a while, the importance of chip for automotive new technologies in the future goes without saying. The functionalities of ECUs (onboard computer) became more complicated as technology advances gradually. When failures happened as the car had been used for many years that original parts stock from OEM are insufficient or is unable to reproduce for a small batch, then the value of the ECU repairing technology emerges. In the morning of 28th July, the editors of Auto Future came to Yong Sheng Automotive Electronic, which is located in Xizhi, New Taipei City, to visit Mr. Sheng-Tai Ko, the chairman and the managing director, about the prospect of development in the future for the ECU repairing industry with more importance than ever.
Chairman Ko, who started as a workshop apprentice, has the expertise in car-repairing; especially in the moment that the electronic systems play more important role in the technology of whole automotive engineering, Chairman Ko’s abundant experience paved the way for Yong Sheng Automotive Electronic in the success of ECU repairing territory, which owns 60% of market share in Taiwan, and the repair cases might reach 16,000 this year, and their profits will keep growing by 20% annually; 96% of their clients are roadside workshops, 3% are authorized dealers, 1% are material supplier. It means that Yong Sheng simply utilizes the B2B business model to rapidly improve the efficiency of operation. Certainly, Chairman Ko doesn’t shy away to say that the business opportunities of ECU repairing industry is based on the grey area of “big companies don’t want to do, small companies can’t do”; at the same time, the core technology of Yong Sheng is “testing” … only the accurate simulation of the failed component in a real car-using environment can dig out and solve the problem by testing. With this successful practice, Chairman Ko plans to explore markets overseas in the coming future, and aim at Singapore, Malaysia, etc. in the first step.
During the interview, I also asked Chairman Ko about the evolvement of the competition among OEMs, major Tier One sub-system suppliers, and chip design companies in the development of automotive industry in the future… In 2003, major carmakers and sub-system suppliers jointly established the AUTOSAR organization that developed an open standard of automotive EEA for the automotive industry. There are 9 core members: BMW, Bosch, Continental, Daimler AG, Ford, GM, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Toyota, and VW. These 9 companies are responsible for determining the development strategy and roadmap of the general development of EEA technology, namely the game rules of automotive technology industry. The difficulty for any startup carmaker with different way of thinking to enter the automotive industry has been raised due to this standard; Moreover, the triangular relationship among carmakers, Tier One suppliers, and chip design companies will be a stable equilibrium due to this open standard, and it won’t change significantly as new technology comes… Carmakers will remain as the rule-maker of the specification of new car models, and Tier One masters the design and supply of firmware and the so called “trio electrics”, and chip design companies are in charge of processes including the design, packaging, testing, etc., of chips according to the demand of Tier One. It’s hard for carmakers to acquire or control the latter two, and it’s also hard for the latter two to take the leadership in the automotive industry in the future by new technologies.
The automotive engineering education courses handled by Chairman Ko is another special feature of Yong Sheng Automotive Electronic. In addition to help in-training technicians to participate in the world-class automotive technicians contest, Chairman Ko, who is preparing for the study of PhD degree, had set up a dedicated classroom in the office to teach lessons to students who are willing to enter the automotive industry. The lessons utilize the practical operation to close the gap between students and the status quo of the industry. With the origin from workshop, Chairman Ko assumed that the competitiveness of technology is the key to sustainable operation for 20,000 traditional roadside workshops in Taiwan; they have to keep learning new technologies to follow the trend in the future, and they have to stop counting on selling parts for profits but neglect the fundamental way to survive is the wage earned by the competitiveness of technology. I believe that Chairman Ko, who has strong expertise of repairing technology and passion for education, will run the ECU repairing industry well, especially in the era of automotive new technology that chip design goes for various detailed functions!