The electric vehicle (EV) market's demand for longer driving ranges and shorter charging times is, in turn, driving automakers to produce models with 800V high-voltage charging architectures. These include the Porsche Taycan, Audi Q6 e-tron, and Hyundai Ioniq 5

According to the latest research from TrendForce, due to rising EV penetration rates and the trend towards 800V high-voltage EV architecture, the global automotive market's demand for 6-inch silicon carbide (SiC) wafers is projected to reach 1.69 million units in 2025

The arrival of the 800V EV charging architecture will bring about a total replacement of Si IGBT modules with SiC power devices, which will become a standard component in mainstream EV VFDs (variable frequency drives)Consequently,major automotive component suppliers generally favor SiC components. In particular, Tier-1 supplier Delphi has already begun mass-producing 800V SiC inverters, while other suppliers like BorgWarner, ZF, and Vitesco are also making rapid progress with their respective solutions.

Electric vehicles have become a core application for SiC power devices. For instance, the use of SiC in OBCs (on-board chargers) and DC-DC converters is already relatively mature, whereas the mass production of SiC-based VFDs has not yet reached a large scale.Power semiconductor suppliers, including STMicroelectronics (STM), Infineon, Wolfspeed, and Rohm, have begun collaborating with Tier-1 suppliers and automakers to accelerate the deployment of SiC in automotive applications.

The upstream supply of SiC substrate materials will become the primary bottleneck for SiC power device production, as the manufacturing process for SiC substrates is complex, has high technical barriers to entry, and features slow epitaxial growth.The vast majority of n-Type SiC substrates used for power semiconductor devices are 6 inches in diameter. Although major IDMs like Wolfspeed have made good progress in developing 8-inch SiC wafers, more time is needed not only to improve yield rates but also to transition power semiconductor fabs from 6-inch production lines to 8-inch production lines.

Therefore, 6-inch SiC substrates are expected to remain the mainstream for at least the next five years.On the other hand, with the EV market experiencing explosive growth and the adoption of SiC power devices in automotive applications increasing, the cost of SiC will, in turn, directly determine the pace of deployment for the 800V charging architecture in electric vehicle