Three Chinese suppliers have confirmed a cooperation on power electronics for electric vehicles, pairing NOVOSENSE semiconductor content with Innoscience gallium-nitride (GaN) devices inside UAES systems.

NOVOSENSE, a Suzhou-based analog and mixed-signal chipmaker, announced the tie-up with UAES and Innoscience. UAES — the joint venture between United Automotive Electronic Systems and Bosch's Chinese operations, headquartered in Shanghai — sits at Tier 1 in the domestic EV supply chain, supplying fuel injection and e-drive systems to most major Chinese OEMs. Innoscience, based in Zhuhai, runs 8-inch GaN-on-Si fabrication and is one of the few merchant suppliers of GaN power discretes at scale.

The cooperation links the three layers of a power conversion stack: Innoscience contributes the GaN power transistors, NOVOSENSE contributes the gate drivers and isolation components needed to switch them safely at high frequencies, and UAES integrates both into vehicle-level systems. GaN switches faster than the silicon MOSFETs and silicon-carbide devices now common in onboard chargers and DC-DC converters, allowing smaller magnetics and higher power density.

For UAES, the program is a hedge on the domestic supply base. Chinese OEM procurement teams have pushed hard over the past three years to qualify non-Western chip sources for power stages, gate drivers and isolation products after the 2021–2023 shortage exposed single-source risk at Infineon, TI and ST. A local GaN chain — wafer to driver to module — shortens that qualification path.

For NOVOSENSE and Innoscience, a Tier-1 design win is the credential that matters. Automotive gate drivers and isolation devices carry AEC-Q100 and Q101 qualification timelines that run 18–30 months; anchoring to a volume system house like UAES converts that sunk qualification cost into a repeatable platform position rather than a one-off part sale.

The companies did not disclose program volumes, named vehicle platforms, production start dates or the specific converter topologies targeted — onboard chargers, DC-DC stages or traction inverters all remain candidates. GaN's automotive beachhead to date has been in onboard charging, where switching frequencies above 300 kHz are practical; traction duty cycles, with 400 V and 800 V buses, remain contested territory between SiC incumbents and GaN entrants.

That gap between announcement and production is the story to watch. Cooperation agreements among chip and system suppliers are routinely signed years ahead of revenue, and the claim of a working EV power-electronics chain needs verification against actual module part numbers and launch timing. Innoscience has said previously that its 8-inch Zhuhai capacity supports hundreds of millions of GaN devices annually; automotive take-up of that capacity is still small relative to consumer fast-charger demand, which still dominates its shipments.

What to watch next: a named vehicle program or platform with a UAES part number carrying NOVOSENSE drivers and Innoscience GaN; production timing tied to a specific model year; and whether the cooperation extends from charging and auxiliary power into traction, which would mark GaN's first real move into the highest-value slot in the EV powertrain.