With more than 6.5 million electric vehicles (EVs) on the road today, and annual worldwide sales projections by Pike Research reaching 3.8 million by 2020, demand for semiconductors in the automotive environment is heating up. In fact, Semicast Research calculates that "revenues for original equipment (OE) automotive semiconductors grew by 12% to USD $25.5 billion in 2012, while the total semiconductor industry is judged to have declined by almost three percent to USD $292 billion."
IGBTs have long been at home in the switch power supply market, and they comprise the largest segment of the market for EV power systems. Yole Développement forecasts that the EV market will help drive IGBT growth to $6 billion by 2018. All of the top five OE automotive semiconductor suppliers owe their ranking in part to long-standing IGBT sales, except Freescale Semiconductor.
Above all, the need for ICBT is increasing and we need to focus more on the development of IGBT.
