AI is taking up memory production capacity, automotive chips surge by 180%, and Chinese new energy vehicles are starting to collectively raise prices.

AI is taking up memory production capacity, automotive chips surge by 180%, and Chinese new energy vehicles are starting to collectively raise prices.

China's new energy vehicle market is experiencing a wave of cost-driven price increases. The price of automotive-grade memory chips has soared by around 180% in just three months, prompting more than a dozen new energy vehicle manufacturers to raise prices or tighten discounts, with increases generally ranging from 2,000 to 6,000 yuan. Meanwhile, the fuel vehicle market continues to deepen its discounts, showing a clear divergence between the two major camps.

According to CCTV News, the direct trigger of this price rise is the sharp increase in upstream storage hardware costs. For example, at a Beijing new energy vehicle 4S dealership, since May, the price of several models' optional driver assistance packages has risen from 9,900 yuan to 12,000 yuan, with company announcements clearly attributing the reason to the global rise in storage hardware costs.

This cost pressure is being transmitted to the end market, directly affecting consumers' car purchase decisions. Market research institution TrendForce forecasts that global new energy vehicle sales will reach 23.35 million units in 2026, a year-on-year increase of 14%, but the upward trend in upstream costs will make the overall price pressure in this year’s auto market significantly stronger than in 2025.

AI Crowds Out Production Capacity, Automotive-Grade Memory Chip Prices Soar

The sharp rise in automotive-grade memory chip prices stems from simultaneous pressure on both supply and demand sides.

According to China Automotive News, the surge in AI demand is one of the core drivers pushing up automotive memory prices. The world's three major memory chip suppliers—Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron—have allocated more than 80% of their advanced production capacity to AI servers, greatly narrowing the supply available to the automotive market.

Meanwhile, the rapid evolution of automobile intelligence is also continuously pushing up per-car memory needs. China Automotive News points out that, as national regulations gradually relax and L2 and L3-level driver assistance systems rapidly spread, in-car storage demand is growing exponentially—a vehicle with an L2 system needs about 8GB of basic storage, but if city navigation assistance (NOA) is enabled and an in-car large language model is running, storage demand can exceed 300GB, an increase of more than 35 times.

Structural constraints on the supply side cannot be ignored. Automotive-grade memory chips must meet stringent reliability and safety certification requirements, with certification periods lasting 18 to 24 months. Scaling up capacity is much harder than for consumer products, leading to extremely limited supply flexibility in the short term.

New Energy and Fuel Vehicles Diverge, Cost Pressure Forces Industry Competition Logic to Adjust

This wave of price hikes has created obvious structural differentiation within the automobile market.

While new energy vehicle manufacturers are collectively raising prices, the fuel vehicle market is continuously deepening discounts. Data shows that as of April this year, fuel vehicle promotional efforts have remained high at around 23% for nine consecutive months. However, steep price cuts have not effectively boosted sales—April’s fuel vehicle retail sales dropped 37% year-on-year to about 530,000 units, and the trend of market share shifting toward new energy vehicles is becoming increasingly clear.

TrendForce’s data further confirms this structural transformation: the growth rate of global new energy vehicle sales in 2026 will continue to outperform fuel vehicles. However, the upward pressure on upstream costs also means that the room for new energy vehicle manufacturers to use price wars to seize market share is narrowing, and the logic of industry competition may shift accordingly.

Based on the current supply-demand landscape, it will be difficult for automotive-grade memory chip prices to fall back in the short term, so the cost pressure on new energy vehicle manufacturers will persist.

TrendForce predicts that the price pressure faced by the automotive market this year will be stronger than last year. For consumers, the rising purchase cost of new energy models is already an established fact; for manufacturers, how to strike a balance between passing on costs and maintaining market competitiveness will be the core challenge in the second half of the year. The dual expansion trends in AI computing power demand and automobile intelligence are unlikely to reverse in the short term, and the tight supply of memory chips is expected to continue impacting pricing trends across the whole industry chain.

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