Midea to Invest $1B in NEV System Solutions
Leading Chinese electrical appliance manufacturer Midea Group released a record of investor relations activities on Thursday. The document shows that five products within its existing three major product lines have undergone tests and initiated mass production. The firm says it has provided high-quality products and technical solutions to many major international car companies and leading new carmakers.
Midea’s Industrial Technology Business Group is expected to form the strategic layout of six global R&D centers and two production bases for new energy vehicle (NEV) parts. In the next decade, the company will invest $1 billion in technical research and strive to become a system solutions provider for NEVs.
According to the document, on February 16, 2022, the signing and groundbreaking ceremony of Anqing Welling Auto Parts Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Midea Industrial Technology Business Group, was held in Anqing, Anhui Province, China. As an important strategic project, the total investment is about 11 billion yuan ($1.73 billion), of which the investment in fixed assets is about 6.5 billion yuan.
Welling Auto Parts mainly focuses on the core components of NEVs, including automobile electric compressors, electric power steering (EPS) motors, and drive motors.
The company added that in 2018, Midea established Shanghai MR Semiconductor Ltd., which is concerned with chip development for fields such as home appliances, vehicles, health care and various industrial settings. It mainly produced MCU chips from 2020 to 2021, and mass production began in 2021. Its annual mass production scale is now about 10 million units.
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By 2024, Midea is expected to realize mass production of automobile chips, which will first be applied to the control of electric water pumps in NEVs.
At present, Midea’s MCUs are mainly used for home appliances. In 2021, the global MCU industry is in serious short supply, especially in terms of high-end MCU chips used for automobiles. According to industry insiders, the MCU products developed by Midea are at entry-level, different from automotive chips. The latter are mainly designed by non-Chinese manufacturers.
