Posted on 06/14/2023 4:42:06 AM PDT by FarCenter
Europe’s STMicroelectronics and China’s Sanan Optoelectronics will form a joint venture (JV) in Chongqing, a tech collaboration that promises to boost China’s electric vehicle (EV) industry while also underscoring the limits of US efforts to disrupt China’s semiconductor production.
On June 7, STMicroelectronics said that the JV will produce silicon carbide, or SiC, power devices using its proprietary manufacturing process on 200mm SiC substrates to be made in a separate dedicated facility to be built, owned and operated by Sanan Optoelectronics.
The two companies plan to start production in the fourth quarter of 2025 and reach maximum targeted capacity by 2028. In addition to automotive products, the JV will make power semiconductor devices for other industrial and energy applications such as solar and wind.
The JV’s total investment is expected to reach US$3.2 billion, including $2.4 billion in capital spending over the next five years. Contributions from the two companies will be augmented by loans and government support.
“The combination of Sanan Optoelectronics’ future 200mm substrate manufacturing facility with the front-end [wafer processing] JV and ST’s existing back-end [assembly and test] facility in Shenzhen, China, will enable ST to offer our Chinese customers a fully vertically integrated SiC value chain,” said STMicroelectronics CEO Jean-Marc Chery,
It will also provide China with a complete domestic supply chain for SiC power devices that are now critical for EV production.
Sanan Optoelectronics CEO Simon Lin added that “The establishment of this joint venture will be a major driving force for the wide adoption of SiC devices on the Chinese market… [It is also] an important step for Sanan Optoelectronics’ ambitions as a SiC foundry.”
(Excerpt) Read more at asiatimes.com ...
Countries in Europe did the same thing when it came to Iran.
De Beers sold industrial diamonds to Germany throughout the war.
OK, with a steep markup.
China has oil reserves, but probably not enough to keep up with demand for more than 20 years. But they have plenty of coal reserves, so EV's probably make sense for them.
Conversely, the U.S. has plenty of oil, coal, natural gas to produce energy, yet our government limits our access to them. We could easily fuel/power everybody's cars cheaply if the government got out of the way, but they won't. They even restrict mining of the "rare" earths we have in U.S. soil, including the large cobalt deposits in Minnesota, to make it hard to build the EV's they demand everybody switches to.
The free market would solve a lot of problems.
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