What Do Silicon Carbide Chips Change in Electric Cars?

With the same battery, an electric vehicle switching from IGBT to silicon carbide increases its range by 3 to 10 percent in typical driving.
With the same battery, an electric vehicle switching from IGBT to silicon carbide increases its range by 3 to 10 percent in typical driving.

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SiC chips perform the switching in an electric car's inverter with far lower losses than IGBTs, which typically increases range by 3-10% and shortens charging times in vehicles with 800-volt architectures and shrinks the cooling system. This page explains what the silicon carbide (SiC) transition changes, why, and by how much.

Highlights

  • In the traction inverter, SiC MOSFETs deliver, over a typical driving cycle, an efficiency gain of 3-5% compared to IGBTs; some inverter designs can extend range by more than 7% .
  • Switching-off losses are reduced with SiC by up to 78% ; the drop in total inverter loss is around 41%.
  • In vehicles with 800 V architectures, SiC has effectively become the standard; silicon switches lose performance at high voltages.
  • For the same range, an inverter with SiC can make do with an 82.1 kWh battery instead of an 85 kWh battery.
  • The commercial barrier is not technical but economic: a SiC MOSFET today sells for 4 to 4.5 times the price of an IGBT.

Traction Inverter: The Vehicle's Most Critical Semiconductor Array

The traction inverter is the unit that converts the direct current of the high-voltage battery into the alternating current the electric motor needs to spin. How losslessly this conversion is performed determines the motor's torque, speed, and efficiency; for this reason, the inverter is the most intensively operated point of power electronics in the vehicle. Power switches that open and close thousands of times per second perform this conversion, and every switching operation of these switches generates energy loss.

For years, the standard solution for these switches was the IGBT: a thick, silicon-based, robust, and inexpensive switch. In recent years, silicon carbide-based MOSFETs have been taking their place at the switchboard. In 2023, models with SiC inverters accounted for roughly 28% of the market among pure battery electric vehicles; the Kia EV6, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6, some Porsche models, and the Tesla Model 3 are among the well-known examples that have implemented this transition. Toyota, meanwhile, crossed a similar threshold on the hybrid side: in the new generation of the RAV4

, the company used SiC power semiconductors in its hybrid system for the first time.

What Is the Physical Difference Between IGBT and SiC MOSFET? The difference between the two switches begins with the fundamental property of the material. Silicon's band gap is approximately 1.1 eV ; silicon carbide, at 3.26 eV, is a wide-band-gap semiconductor. This wider energy gap means that SiC can operate efficiently at higher voltages, higher temperatures, and higher switching frequencies. The difference is also tangible numerically: for the same on-resistance, SiC offers a chip area 626 times smaller than silicon, a drift layer 11 times thinner, and thermal resistance 17 times lower.

The truly decisive difference emerges at turn-off. The IGBT produces a structural "tail current" as it exits conduction: current keeps flowing for a short time after the switch turns off, and this energy turns into heat. The structure of the SiC MOSFET produces no tail current at all. In a single-phase inverter example, switching from an IGBT to a SiC MOSFET reduced turn-off losses 6.9 W to 1.5 W, total losses fell 14.4 W to 8.5 W, meaning a reduction of approximately 41% . A peer-reviewed 2024 study confirms that conduction and switching losses can be reduced by up to 60% compared to the IGBT.

Then there are the side-channel losses to add. An IGBT solution necessarily requires an antiparallel diode, and this diode's reverse recovery losses are significantly large: in the same comparison, this loss fell 91.1 W to 6.4 W. The SiC MOSFET's body diode, being fast and robust enough, eliminates the need for a separate diode.

How Many Kilometers Does It Actually Add to Range?

There is a considerable gap between manufacturer claims and simulation data, and understanding this gap is important for reading the claims correctly. The conservative end comes from a simulation of an 80 kW traction inverter at full load: the SiC solution showed 70% lower losses and at least 1.4% higher efficiency compared to the IGBT at full load; at the average operating point of electric vehicles, namely 15% load, the difference rises to 3.4%. It is also known why the advantage grows at partial loads: SiC's gain is pronounced at currents below about 700 A, while above that the IGBT is still competitive. Since the majority of daily driving takes place precisely in this partial-load region, SiC's real-world contribution is more meaningful than peak performance figures suggest.

System-level range gain claims fall within this range:

  • In a typical driving cycle, 3–5% efficiency gain (one vehicle manufacturer's patent statement)
  • In range, up to 6% increase (an assessment by a major semiconductor supplier)
  • In a standard driving cycle, 5–10% extra range (another manufacturer's projection)
  • Above 7% range extension (promotional data for a compact 800 V SiC inverter)

Claims occasionally voiced by manufacturers, such as 10–15% range and "twice as fast charging," should be read at the marketing level; measured simulation and patent data paint a more cautious picture. Still, the picture is clear: the 3–7% band represents a serious range increase achieved without touching battery capacity at all. This gain can also be converted into achieving the same range with a smaller battery: the SiC version of a vehicle can match the range of an 85 kWh IGBT-equipped vehicle with 82.1 kWh ; at a battery cost of 150 dollars per kWh, this means savings of roughly 435 dollars .

Why Do 800 Volt Vehicles Have to Use SiC?

800 voltlu bir elektrikli araçta silisyum karbür bir zorunluluktur; IGBT yerine SiC kullanan invertörler %40 daha hafif oluyor ve şarj sürelerini yarıya indiriyor.

The transition from 400 V to 800 V is a natural upgrade of the battery system: charging power nearly doubles at the same current, and 350 kW DC fast charging of up to 'a becomes possible. Here is the problem: silicon IGBTs and MOSFETs lose performance precisely in this high-voltage region. This is exactly the technical reason why SiC has become the de facto standard in 800 V vehicles; the material is already designed for high voltage, high temperature, and high frequency. A manufacturer's 800 V SiC inverter came out 40% lighter and 30% more compact than the IGBT equivalent; the head of the same engineering team noted that the 800 V system noticeably extended range and cut charging times by half compared to 400 V systems.

The 800-volt system significantly extends range and cuts charging times by half compared to 400-volt systems.
Richard F. Dauch, CEO of Delphi Technologies

This speed target comes at a price: 350 kW charging creates a high heat load simultaneously in the battery and the inverter, requiring the vehicle's entire cooling system to be redesigned around this new balance. Fortunately, SiC's low losses also ease this side of the job: in the same 80 kW simulation, the SiC inverter had to dissipate only 61% of the heat produced by the IGBT version at peak load, and the semiconductor area shrank from 270 mm² to 78 mm². The cooling system was calculated to be reducible by of the heat 40% 40%. Less waste heat, a smaller cooler, more compact power electronics: that is how the chain closes.

The Two Sides of Thermal Management: A Shrinking Cooler, an Unexpected Problem

SiC MOSFETs can operate up to a junction temperature of 200 °C; silicon, due to leakage current above roughly 250 °C, practically cannot reach this region. Lower temperature fluctuation (ΔTj) across the entire load range translates directly into reliability: the switch is stressed less in every thermal cycle, and lifespan increases. Thanks to reduced losses, the cooling requirements of SiC inverters are simplified and passive components also shrink; the high switching frequency reduces the size of coils and capacitors, simplifies control algorithms, and reduces harmonics. However, the same property gave rise to an unexpected engineering problem. The SiC inverter now produces so little waste heat that it struggles to provide the heat needed to warm the battery in cold climates. Battery preconditioning is one of the biggest enemies of range at low temperatures, and getting the battery to operating temperature quickly in winter is critical. Since the reduced losses took away the sufficient heat source for this task, automakers had to develop new control strategies; this problem is clearly documented in the patent of a major German manufacturer in 2024. A rare but instructive example of efficiency itself creating a thermal design problem.

Why Hasn't Every Vehicle Switched to SiC?

The answer is one word: cost. Today, a SiC MOSFET sells for

4 to 4.5 times the price of an IGBT; as production volume increases and resistance per chip improves, this multiplier is expected to fall to 2.5 times within the next few years. 2.5 times is expected. At high-current operating points, the IGBT still retains its cost-per-ampere advantage; this is the only category where SiC loses to silicon. That is why an interesting intermediate solution has emerged in the industry: hybrid inverters. A 2026 patent published by an automaker describes an architecture whose single phase leg contains both a silicon IGBT and a SiC MOSFET; the controller determines which switch is active once a current threshold is exceeded. SiC's low losses at partial load and the IGBT's low saturation voltage at high current come into play. A similar three-mode hybrid control has also been proposed in academic patents: IGBT alone at high load, SiC alone at low load, and both together at steady cruising. These approaches aim to capture most of SiC's efficiency advantage at a lower cost.

On the other hand, the direction of the market is clear. The EV power inverter market is expected to rise from 8.97 billion dollars in 2025 to 10.67 billion dollars in 2026, and to reach 25.41 billion dollars by 2035. There is also a technology race on the horizon: GaN HEMTs are being flagged as the next possible disruptive semiconductor technology for electric vehicles. SiC is therefore not a destination, but an accelerating phase of power electronics.

Practical Takeaway for the Buyer

The SiC chip is not a feature that shines in the showroom window, but it changes three concrete things that influence the purchasing decision: with the same battery, 3-10% more range, charging speeds approaching 350 kW with an 800 V architecture, and more compact power electronics that run cooler. When comparing vehicles, checking whether the car is 400 V or 800 V and which semiconductor its inverter is equipped with is the quickest yardstick for understanding how efficient a drivetrain the catalog figures actually point to. An inverter with SiC converts a larger share of every kilowatt-hour spent on the battery into motion on the road - and in electric vehicle engineering, gains come precisely from the sum of these small percentage points.

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