Europe eyes car chips as next battleground with China
Europe eyes car chips as next battleground with China
Commission will start questioning its industry about competition with China and others on older-generation microchips.
Commission will start questioning its industry about competition with China and others on older-generation microchips.
Europe is widening its focus from high-tech to low-tech microchips as it fears a fresh challenge from Chinese subsidized firms to supply the electric vehicle boom.
The European Commission will start to question microchip suppliers and customers about legacy chips and whether there is a dependency on China supplies, it told POLITICO in a statement, with first results expected by the end of summer.
Officials fear a challenge to the bloc's market power on so-called legacy microchips — older-generation technology used in cars, household appliances and medical devices. The move follows a similar one in the United States, where the government launched a survey on the topic in January.
There's irony here. Europe went along with the US push to block Chinese access to semiconductors. China turns to domestic chip manufacturing, and the obvious first step is to get into mature nodes, the segment of the semiconductor industry where European firms have been successful. European Commission: shocked Pikachu face.