The latest figures provided by the global research firm TrendForce reportedly show that car sales in the US for 2019 are projected to slide by 3 percent Year-over-Year. China’s car sales for the same year are also projected to drop by 7 percent. The company says that the ongoing trade dispute between the US and China has taken a serious toll on the global automotive market, which is now facing a continuous decline in sales. Now struggling under a negative market cycle, major car makers seem to be directing more resources into developing functions pertaining to advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving systems (ADS).
Caroline Chen, analyst for the global automotive market, TrendForce, pointed out that the automotive industry has entered a major transformational period, where vehicles themselves are undergoing revolutionary technological changes. “The automotive supply chain, which was previously very much closed off to new entrants, is starting to open up for non-traditional players,” said Chen. “For instance, companies in Taiwan’s well-established ICT supply chain now have a golden opportunity to venture into the automotive market and carve out a niche for themselves.”
As for self-driving technologies, they have already started on the path of commercialization this year; and their deployment will expand noticeably in 2020, the reports says. In the near future, most of the self-driving vehicles will be commercial vehicles operating under the business models of taxi/ride-hailing services, trucking/logistics services, and closed-loop transportation networks.
Chen noted that both ADAS and ADS require various types of sensors for detecting obstacles on the road. Thus, the number of sensors in a vehicle will increase in tandem with the rising demand for driver assistance and self-driving functions. Among the various sensors installed in vehicles, the millimeter-wave radar (mmWave radar) is central to the operation of many subsystems. TrendForce currently forecasts that the total quantity of mmWave radar modules installed across all vehicles worldwide will increase by 15.8 percent YoY in 2020.
