[HN Gopher] Jaguar Land Rover to suspend output due to chip shor...
___________________________________________________________________
Jaguar Land Rover to suspend output due to chip shortage
Author : jchrisa
Score : 279 points
Date : 2021-04-23 16:51 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| intergalplan wrote:
| Not relevant to production of consumer vehicles under a temporary
| shortage of high-tech parts (though, under a longer-term
| shortage, it might be) but the Soviets had an interesting
| approach to high-tech dependencies in their military equipment:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_variants_of_Soviet_mili...
|
| I first encountered the idea of "Monkey Models" in Suvorov's book
| (referenced on that page).
|
| The TL;DR is that the Soviets would design their equipment with
| the best high-tech sensors, weapons, countermeasures, et c., that
| they could reasonably manage, _but also_ design the equipment to
| function with much simpler parts & manufacturing processes. So a
| high-tech Soviet tank might have an electronic targeting system,
| but also be designed to work with a simpler glass-and-steel
| rangefinder that could be built with relatively simple tools, in
| a half-decent machine shop shed. They might fit their best models
| with advanced armor plating, but design a variant that replaced
| all that with a little extra steel. They'd do this with
| practically everything, including aircraft.
|
| Why? Multiple reasons: 1) it let them export "new" equipment to
| allies and puppet-states at a lower cost and in much greater
| quantities, by selling them "monkey models" with much of the
| high-tech gear & parts swapped for low-tech counterparts (older
| generations of top-end gear would be sent to the closest
| allies/puppets or, more often, to domestic reserve units, in a
| kind of tiered system), 2) since most of the Soviet gear the West
| encountered was in direct or proxy wars with Soviet ally, client,
| or puppet states, the West couldn't gain much insight into the
| actual capabilities of modern Soviet equipment, 3) so-equipped
| allies would be starved of gear that could threaten the actual
| Soviet military, in case they became adversaries, 4) less-
| advanced allies could more easily maintain gear without so much
| high-tech junk in it, and 5) perhaps most importantly, it gave
| the Soviets a kind of supply-line defense-in-depth--they had not
| only designed these weapon systems so they could be built (as
| weaker versions) without high-tech manufacturing, but _practiced
| doing it_. In the event of a shooting war with, say, the US, the
| Soviets could keep shipping (inferior, but much better than
| nothing) tanks & aircraft to the front lines even if all their
| high-tech facilities were bombed out of existence and they lost
| access to advanced materials (say, high-tech armor material),
| with hardly a hiccup.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I knew about the monkey models from Iraq, but I never made the
| connection to supply chain resiliency and wartime production.
| Thanks for the new perspective!
| bluesquared wrote:
| Most comments I've seen on this and other related articles on HN
| are too focused on the high-end chips doing fancy stuff. There
| are not only supply constraints on these sorts of high-compute
| chips, but also big shortages on practically all ICs in general.
|
| I'm a hardware engineer for a medical device company, and we've
| been dealing with supply constraints not only with our MCUs but
| other ICs like high-side power switches, LDOs, memory, and more.
| It's tough when we're low volume (a few thousand a year) and the
| huge automakers and other huge consumer electronics giants are
| gobbling up all the parts.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Do medical devices and auto tech use similar components? I
| understand there's a lot in common, but I would think that
| safety constraints for one domain would cause it to not overlap
| with the other.
|
| Forgive my ignorance on this, as I am but a humble software
| engineer who is forever in amazement at how all ICs are
| basically flattened rocks we shoot lightning through to make it
| do math real dang quick...
| _pmf_ wrote:
| Sometimes, automotive components are just better QA'd
| (validated) regular components.
| Exmoor wrote:
| One would assume (or hope) that medical device components
| are also QA'd to at least the standard of automotive
| components.
| wishysgb wrote:
| well they are completely different standards. you
| wouldn't expect a medical device inside a human body to
| operate at 130C
| jononor wrote:
| One of the most common additional requirements on
| automotive parts is extended range, often below -20 C and
| above 70 C. That is often not relevant for medical
| products which operate only inside, near room
| temperatures.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Walked into an ice rink.
|
| They measured kids temperature. 107 degrees.
|
| After much confusion as to why the healthy looking child,
| and that no I wasn't rushing her to the ER, they finally
| figured out that for head scanners don't work right at 20
| degrees.
|
| The solution of course was to have someone sit on it when
| not in use.
|
| A week later no more temperature scans.
| cronix wrote:
| And then there's also the vibration issue. I don't think
| most medical devices need to stand up to continuous
| vibrations like you'd have in an auto engine. If they are
| not soldered well, eventually things can loosen up and
| fall off, or minimally just break contact. I think the
| car industry is closer to the aero/space industry than
| medical industry.
| digikata wrote:
| In addition to the other good comments regarding
| medical/automotive overlap, is that often those chip lines
| have long lifecycle commitments built into them - ie. we
| promise to make this set of parts for at least 10 years. For
| both both of those customer areas, not having to redesign
| your boards and recertify devices on an external timeline is
| of value.
| bluesquared wrote:
| Often yes. "Medical devices" covers a large array of products
| from in-vitro/small implantable to things similar to
| laboratory equipment (think patient monitoring) or industrial
| (MRI and the like, autoclaves, etc). "Safety" is not really
| achieved on a per-component basis, but as a sum of the parts.
|
| As for other comments in this thread, depending on your
| device, it can see a great deal of thermal stress (steam
| autoclaves) or vibration (MRI), and not all components in
| autos are experiencing the total vibrations from internal
| combustion engines. I've typically designed in components
| with extended temperature ranges, most commonly 85C+ or even
| 125C. This increases the reliability and extends the life of
| your product.
|
| "Automotive-grade" typically means extra lot testing, and
| some parameters may vary in the datasheet due to the way the
| parts were validated by the manufacturer, even though they're
| technically the same part. For instance, I am using a Texas
| Instruments part that became nearly impossible to source. I
| had the automotive version in my bill of materials because at
| time of the design, it was the only version out. An
| alternative made by TI looked like a good fit, but a few key
| parameters in the datasheet didn't quite line up. It was
| because the automotive was tested at like 13.8V input whereas
| the newer "industrial" part was tested with 24V and slightly
| different loads. Same exact component, tested slightly
| differently.
| blihp wrote:
| Similar but not the same. There is an insane variety of
| _nearly_ identical MCUs, for example. For an otherwise
| identical part, you can often get it in half a dozen or more
| packages. (i.e. the chip has different physical form factors
| in terms of how it attaches to the PCB, pin type and spacing
| etc... but the actual die inside is the same) Then there are
| subtle variants for a given MCU (differing types
| /amounts/speeds of RAM/Flash/interfaces etc.) The matrix of
| variants quickly gets out of hand. It's probably easily
| 10-50x (depending on the part) the number of variants
| Intel/AMD come out with each year. The autos also typically
| use parts with an extended temperature range.
| steve_b wrote:
| For the subtle variants, I believe it's how they price
| discriminate. It's all the same part, but they use fuses to
| disable various peripherals. Way easier to do that than to
| fabricate a whole bunch of different chips.
| cossray wrote:
| Since January of this year, I have been waiting for a certain
| MCU (STM32F042K6T6) to be available but still no luck. I get
| the bigger picture now: there's a shortage at the source. I
| have to move fast and secure a stock of the rest of the ICs,
| otherwise this supply-chain issue can be disastrous to small
| hardware companies.
| cushychicken wrote:
| I'm convinced that, if in-person IEEE meetups were still a
| thing right now, you could drop a tray of ST Micro chips in
| the middle of the meeting and watch it devolve into a
| fistfight in seconds.
|
| The chip shortage right now is _rough_.
| joezydeco wrote:
| We need thousands, and we need them in humidity-sealed
| trays. A handful thrown on a table isn't enough.
| zafka wrote:
| Hi, My email is in profile. Also in Med devices, and always
| looking to talk to others in the field.
| Kliment wrote:
| Hey, if you need help finding replacements I might be able to
| help - I've literally been doing mostly this for customers
| since January. It's absolute bullshit and I've never seen this
| before in all my time in this industry.
|
| email in my profile.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Automakers are far from giant, and over the time their BOMs
| actually shrank for most mainstream, high volume cars.
|
| Corollas are remarkable how "dumb" they are despite seemed
| electronic sophistication.
|
| Automotive IC market aside from car only parts looks rather
| random.
|
| You may have $100 mil spec(r) parts sitting besides 10C/ parts,
| and doin essentially the same due to regulatory, and market
| peculiarities.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| We recently tried to get 150pc of the same uC that's on the
| teensy 3.6 - no chance. Luckily we weren't bound to the exact
| model and could substitute for a pin compatible model with
| different flash sizes and without a certain feature.
|
| Then I had to design a board because a simple 5 to 12 V boost
| converter from TI became unobtainium.
|
| We are a prototype shop and do quantities of 10 and less most
| of the time.
| sircastor wrote:
| I saw Paul S (who makes the Teensy) posted recently that he's
| having trouble sourcing some components.
|
| I'm projecting that a hobby project I make is going to be
| delayed by not being able to get the LDO I worked into the
| design. I'm contemplating switching out the component for
| something a little more common. (AP2112 for an LM1117 for
| anyone who's interested)
| WanderPanda wrote:
| It's sad seeing the price inelasticity causing a decreasing
| productivity in this way. I hope this is a lesson for all
| future considerations combining JIT with price inelastic
| goods
| dv_dt wrote:
| I think thats two factors. One, the analog chip manufacturers
| that deal with power ICs have been consolidating, and two the
| power outages in Texas hit a number of foundries that tend to
| focus on embedded parts.
| Kliment wrote:
| It's more than that. I explained this last time someone
| asked, here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26842924
| gumby wrote:
| What I (foolishly) hadn't realized until I saw it in EE Times the
| other day: the shortage is in parts built on older tech (e.g.
| larger feature size). These factories don't produce the high
| margin parts so investment in them has lagged.
|
| Allegedly you can bring up a fab large node (still sub micron) in
| just 4-5 months -- there's a lot of surplus / used gear out
| there, but will anyone bother (try might not earn back your cap
| ex).
| digikata wrote:
| Someone with the right background and contacts should put it
| together, I think the smart move there is to not only plan on
| selling chips into regular markets, but to get into talks with
| customers to become a guaranteed supplier that derisks
| correlated shortages from other sources.
| gumby wrote:
| One problem is the car companies have such razor thin margins
| that investing for them specifically is pretty bad. They are
| literally shaving pennies here and there on the backs of
| their suppliers, which reminds me of the (physical) toy and
| game business.
|
| It's no wonder there was inadequate response from their
| supply chain.
| digikata wrote:
| There is a reason penny wise and pound foolish is an
| enduring saying.
| speedgoose wrote:
| It seems that the Jaguar I-Pace production is not stopped. It is
| produced by Magna and not Jaguar but perhaps it gets priority on
| the parts.
| wmf wrote:
| So few i-Paces are sold that maybe it's no big deal.
| speedgoose wrote:
| In my country they sold about 400 of them in 2021 so far.
| Which is the best seller for Jaguar Land Rover by a huge
| margin.
| pmichaud wrote:
| Is there a good article around that explains the specific
| semiconductor bottlenecks everyone is facing right now? I'd like
| to know more. It seems like a huge opportunity, but also I am
| guessing it's a very hard or impossible problem since it hasn't
| already been solved by infinite money?
| Kliment wrote:
| I explained it in a comment here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26842924 and here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26659709
| tyingq wrote:
| This article has some detail:
| https://www.extremetech.com/computing/318554-a-massive-chip-...
|
| The summary there seems to be _" Insufficient investment in
| 200mm wafers"_. Combined with everyone's demand forecasts being
| screwed up due to COVID and being either too high, or too low.
| Finally, you can't just move from FabA to FabB (even for the
| same wafer and process size) quickly, so customers can't just
| quickly migrate to whatever fabs ended up with excess capacity.
|
| _" 200mm fabs are older facilities that process chips at
| mature nodes, which range from 350nm to 90nm"_ -
| https://semiengineering.com/demand-picks-up-for-200mm/
| wernst wrote:
| https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/TSMC-he...
|
| From TSMC's Mark Lui:
|
| - Supply chain disruptions from Covid
|
| - US / China trade disputes
|
| - Digital transformation from Covid (increasing demand for
| chips)
|
| - "Double booking" feedback loop (companies preorder more than
| needed, fearing fab capacity limits --> makes it seem like
| there's less fab capacity --> companies book more capacity,
| fearing capacity limits)...this is not specific to Covid, but
| heats up in this kind of situation
| pjc50 wrote:
| A lot of people seem to have learned economics 101 but not
| control theory, and seem to think that the economy will respond
| to signals instantly rather than having a finite frequency
| response.
|
| The high level of uncertainty doesn't help; how sure are you
| that there won't be a pandemic related demand crash in six
| months?
| [deleted]
| kalleboo wrote:
| Right! I get it for the very high end chips used in CPUs and
| GPUs that are in demand for home computers and cryptocurrency
| mining are constrained by a very limited amount of fabs, but
| what is holding back the older process chips?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| There's a confluence of things affecting the older-process,
| more commodity chips as well:
|
| - Demand for electronics as a whole, at all scales (from
| computers to cars to IOT to industrial controls and all kinds
| of other things that we don't think about) has been shooting
| up for the last decade (without compensating expansion in
| fabrication capacity). This is the 3rd serious supply
| shortage we've seen in electronic components in the last few
| years (anyone else remember seeing MLCC lead times hit 100
| weeks in 2017-2018?).
|
| - All of these supply lines running all the way back to the
| raw silicon operate with very lean (or no) supply buffers.
| Think "suppliers making deliveries directly to the factory
| floor" lean. These sorts of systems are not resilient, and do
| not respond well to shocks (like suppliers having to shut
| down due to a global pandemic).
|
| - As has been commonly noted, there have also been demand
| shocks, where electronics consumers (especially car
| companies) who are normally operating on timelines
| forecasting out 6-24 months forecast reduced customer demand,
| reflected that in their orders, and then had to adjust back
| when demand for cars came back.
|
| - Similarly, with people locked down and working from home,
| demand for electronics both for professional use and as a
| replacement for entertainment options has expanded.
|
| - Finally, there are rumors (that I haven't been able to
| confirm in a meaningful way) that some large Chinese
| manufacturers have been stockpiling components in
| anticipation of further tariffs, sanctions and trade tension.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > (anyone else remember seeing MLCC lead times hit 100
| weeks in 2017-2018?).
|
| I did, even Chinese domestic market still has months long
| passives shortages even today.
|
| > - Finally, there are rumors (that I haven't been able to
| confirm in a meaningful way) that some large Chinese
| manufacturers have been stockpiling components in
| anticipation of further tariffs
|
| Actually plain speculations, some times by people very far
| from semiconductors market, just like with masks, baby
| formula, apartments, cement, aluminium, stocks etc.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| What is a fab?
| Tortoise wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_pla
| n...
| 015a wrote:
| https://wiki.factorio.com/Processing_unit
| JamesCoyne wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_pla
| n...
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Shorthand for "fabrication"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_pla
| n...
| [deleted]
| beowulfey wrote:
| I can't speak for semiconductors but it seems like supply
| chains everywhere are hurting. I work in bio and it used to be
| you could order something and it would arrive in 2 days. Now
| literally every product I order is backordered 2 weeks to 2
| months. Even innocuous things like centrifuge tubes or common
| chemicals!
| dharmab wrote:
| I have friends working in the physical side of the chip
| industry- there is a lot of money being poured into the
| industry right now to increase fab output, but it takes time to
| build the physical infrastructure. Chip fabs are highly
| hazardous environments and need to conform to pretty intense
| standards.
|
| And of course, every time anyone on their specific team within
| the fab gets COVID-like systems, the _entire team_ goes home
| for two weeks. This has happened several times over the past
| year.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| You'd think that a fab would be one of the least likely work
| places where one would pick up covid. The air is constantly
| filtered, you're wearing bunny suits with face coverings and
| the density of people is pretty low.
| dharmab wrote:
| This fab is in an ultraconservative city where masks and
| social distancing are not practiced. The workers have been
| getting COVID from the community, not at work.
| ls612 wrote:
| But if I have covid and you and I are both wearing those
| weird space suit looking things (I don't know what they
| actually are called) you would think the odds of me
| giving you covid would be minuscule right?
| jacques_chester wrote:
| I assume people have to eat lunch somewhere.
| dharmab wrote:
| Not everyone at the plant wears a full suit. A lot of the
| workers are sitting in offices most of the day monitoring
| systems, or are working on supporting systems like
| chemical pipes, or loading and unloading trucks.
|
| And then everyone sees each other outside of work anyway.
| Some of the people at the plant are family, or as close
| as family. Some go to the same church. Some go camping or
| fishing together on the weekends
| baybal2 wrote:
| I once heard the story of a family of 6 all working in
| one Intel fab. So small is the industry.
| Arainach wrote:
| Even infinite money can't set up new fabs overnight - factories
| are tough. Unless you're a government paying for the strategic
| advantage of domestic manufacturing, you have to decide whether
| the plant will still be profitable when the shortage ends - and
| whether it's currently profitable enough to merit building.
|
| It's not unlike the situation with PPE manufacturing circa
| March 2020.
| pmichaud wrote:
| Yeah I guess I'm just surprised. It feels to me (who knows
| basically nothing about it) that it's been a pretty big
| problem for at least a few years, and it also seems like the
| combined buying power of the entire world's hardware
| companies would make the investment in new fabs trivially
| worth it.
|
| Maybe fabs take longer than a couple years to set up
| regardless of money spent?
|
| Maybe fabs take a level of expertise that only a handful of
| people in the world have, and it's a matter of ramping up
| promising undergrads to that level which will take like 15+
| years?
|
| Maybe analysts expect demand to even out so that capital
| outlays right now don't make sense?
|
| But all of these are surprising to me to the degree that we
| still don't have enough semiconductors. I'm just hoping for a
| sort of comprehensive overview of the issue, if such a thing
| exists.
| pjc50 wrote:
| From my perspective in the software side of a semiconductor
| company, it's very much a problem of the last year.
|
| The AKM fab fire in November 2020 also made the situation
| worse.
| Leherenn wrote:
| It's pretty much impossible to find GNSS chips currently,
| at least the ones we use (ublox). There's a massive TCXO
| shortage.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Fabs also have to be manufactured.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> Maybe fabs take longer than a couple years to set up
| regardless of money spent?
|
| Maybe fabs take a level of expertise that only a handful of
| people in the world have, and it's a matter of ramping up
| promising undergrads to that level which will take like 15+
| years?_
|
| From the start of permitting to first tape out, I've heard
| five years for cutting edge, three to four for mid range
| (under 100nm), and two years for older processes. Subtract
| a year for expansions of existing facilities where hazmat
| permits and infrastructure already exist.
|
| Far more than a handful of people in the world are
| qualified to set up a fab but it really is hard, time
| consuming work that requires a lot of expertise. While most
| of the equipment in a fab is customized off the shelf (not
| totally custom but not cookie cutter), each piece has to be
| carefully calibrated to fit in with the whole.
|
| Stuff like HVAC, which is normally pretty predictable in
| commercial buildings, has to be custom designed for
| seasonal variations which differ from region to region
| while taking into account each piece of equipment's heat
| generation and stability needs. Tens if not hundreds of
| different robotic positioning and material handling systems
| need to be calibrated so that they can move wafers entire
| meters with a precision and accuracy measured in the tens
| or hundreds of nanometers. The design of the factory even
| needs to take into account regional variations in day to
| day humidity which usually takes a year just in data
| collection.
|
| Building the concrete shell for a fab is easy. It's filling
| it with equipment that actually works together to produce
| cutting edge technology that is the expensive part.
| segmondy wrote:
| When the pandemic started, most companies thought demand will
| go down for things like cars, etc so didn't place orders for
| semiconductors needed for things like cars. Instead demand went
| up for devices used at home like laptops, webcams, etc. When
| companies order component, they don't buy on demand, but they
| order far ahead. So you might say something like, I want to buy
| 10million units of X in 6 months, or next year. The
| manufacturers operate at peak capacity already so they can't
| crank up output on demand. You give them enough time to be able
| to meet your needs. The companies that ordered say 1/3rd or 1/2
| of what they needed realized they need more since the pandemic
| didn't slow sales down much. They went to order some more
| components and the manufacture says, "sorry! lead time is now
| 12 months" because they already got contracts with other folks.
| This of course is not a one supplier to one product problem,
| but possible across a chain of supplier/producer relationship.
| The organizations that saw there might be a supply problem
| earlier on, aggressively stocked up and bought up more than
| they needed which placed additional strain across the supply
| problem. The supply problem ends up cascading across industry.
| This is know as the bullwhip effect -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect. No one wants to
| invest in new plant because by the time it's done, the issue
| might be resolved and even if it's not, the plant might not
| return the ROI. That's how we ended up where we are.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| this is why I roll my eyes at anyone trying to deride the
| stimulus bill etc about worries about inflation. The supply
| shortages are temporary as expectation of lower demand did
| not come true....it is not a fundamental limitation of supply
| capacity...truly our capacity to supply products can be
| ramped up enormously and fairly quickly.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Thanks for bringing up the Bullwhip effect. Do you know about
| any format where one can get insights into the current state
| of the supply chain world? I don't get why podcasts and tv
| channels talk about all and everything 24/7 but never manage
| to pull up an interview with top tier supply
| chain/logistics/purchasing manager people. Why isn't this
| something that should be publicly debate?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Regular TV long since gave up on doing industrial coverage.
| There might be a bit of discussion in the specialist press
| e.g. EEtimes.
|
| There's no "push" demand by such people to get exposure,
| either; they're buying not selling, so they're not needing
| to market themselves.
| nraynaud wrote:
| anyone knows the beer game from the Fifth Discipline?
| aazaa wrote:
| > What has made the auto industry particularly vulnerable is its
| reliance on just-in-time delivery, where parts are brought in
| when needed, rather than being stockpiled.
|
| It's fascinating that the response is to close production rather
| than increase prices.
|
| Those warning of inflation point to events like this as support.
| But inflation requires that higher producer costs be accepted by
| consumers.
|
| And for that price transmission mechanism to work, there needs to
| be supply actually available at the higher price. It appears that
| just-in-time economics mean that in the event of a shortage your
| supply just goes offline. You don't get higher prices, just empty
| shelves.
| friedman23 wrote:
| >It's fascinating that the response is to close production
| rather than increase prices.
|
| They are closing production on their cheapest cars
| ticviking wrote:
| > You don't get higher prices, just empty shelves.
|
| Trying to buy on the used market right now. I promise you we
| are seeing higher prices because people who had 30k to buy new,
| are now spending more for the higher quality 1-3 year old used
| stock.
| Closi wrote:
| > It's fascinating that the response is to close production
| rather than increase prices.
|
| This assumes there is no substitute good - which there is.
| Other cars.
| brewdad wrote:
| Jaguar. Accept no substitute.
| stevehawk wrote:
| We're not allowed to raise prices in respond to supply/demand
| for consumer products anymore. The public cries "price gouging"
| and you get canceled.
| beowulfey wrote:
| Ha! So instead the company just cancels the product anyway.
| [deleted]
| jtdev wrote:
| You'll likely see higher prices in the used market... which
| will almost certainly bubble up to the new market.
| legulere wrote:
| Chip supply is inelastic. Paying more still doesn't increase
| production capacities.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Short to medium term very true. Long term if people (think)
| prices will remain high, more factories will be built.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Higher prices in the secondary market.
| mrh0057 wrote:
| The model your are using is to simple. Since there is a
| shortage of new vehicles it pushes up the price of used ones.
| Then any supply of new vehicles that hasn't been sold yet goes
| up. People will keep cars longer since the price of new
| vehicles has gone up. The drives higher repair rate of vehicles
| and parts prices will start to rise. Since there is a chip
| shortages you may not even been able to get certain parts new
| so it drives up the price of used parts containing the chips.
|
| As people put off buying new cars when cars start becoming more
| widely available the prices stay higher until the shortage
| worked out and then prices of used and new car drops.
| Manufacturers are likely to overshoot the number of new
| vehicles since the models they are using assume the increased
| demand. This means once it is worked out a significant drop in
| prices and you can get vehicles really cheap. See 2008 cash for
| clunkers where it caused a spike in used cars price
| temporarily. It also had the effect that leases where cheaper
| since manufacturers believe they would be able to sale them
| used at a higher price which was only temporary causing them to
| lose money.
|
| You do get increased prices for new stock that don't have
| existing contracts. If you screw up your estimate of what you
| need and your suppliers don't have the capacity to make your
| parts, now you have a shortage. Now you have to shutdown
| because you can't get parts but a manufacturer who did a better
| job of estimating will be able to charge a higher price. In
| this case it would be Toyota which didn't cut their chip orders
| when the crisis hit. Of course they are also likely to have
| some shortage of certain vehicles since there will be a shift
| in demand for their vechiles. So if you own work trucks the
| value of them will skyrocket right now since most of them in
| the US are made by the big 3 which don't have the chips to
| manufacture them.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The cars are maybe already paid for. Then they can't increase
| the prices until they cleared the pending orders?
| edoceo wrote:
| price up on _new_ orders.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Nvidia is not really doing that either. I wonder why so
| many companies are reluctant to increase prices until they
| meet demand.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I don't mind patiently waiting for a new Xbox but if
| Microsoft suddenly doubled the price I'd strongly
| consider patiently waiting for a PS5 instead.
|
| I'm guessing whatever companies expect they could gain
| (or even retain) from raising the price in the short-term
| doesn't exceed what they expect to lose in the long-term.
| willcipriano wrote:
| You have empty shelves, workplaces start going in person again
| and demand for cars becomes less elastic. Potentially used cars
| start selling for more than they cost new.
| mleo wrote:
| Used cars went up in value last year. Rental car companies
| sold their fleet cars into a better market and did not
| acquire new cars. This left rental car companies short on
| supply and able to raise rental car prices to compensate as
| people travel again.
|
| A couple of weeks ago, with seemingly no large events
| occurring, all rental cars in San Antonio were rented. This
| week, they are available, but at higher prices than I would
| normally expect.
| kyllo wrote:
| I'm even seeing stories about U-Haul trucks all being
| rented out by tourists because rental cars are unavailable,
| causing a shortage of rental trucks for movers.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Man, U-Haul must be pretty happy. Just a few weeks ago,
| my UPS driver showed up in a U-Haul truck and was using
| it to deliver packages.
| [deleted]
| ericmay wrote:
| Where are you seeing these stories?
| jeromegv wrote:
| Hawaii https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2021/04/22/why-are-
| visitors-cr...
| chadash wrote:
| I bought a used car last year for 13k after taxes and fees. 9
| months later, I sold to Carvana for 16k (even with a few
| scratches that would have been $300 to fix, plus a $200
| scheduled service coming up in a few weeks). Carvana needs to
| make a profit, so presumably they're going to mark it up
| further. It's a crazy world right now.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Carvana is the Internet's BHPH lot. They don't care how
| much they spend to buy the car because they're gonna sell
| it for 50% down with 20% APR to someone who can't get
| financing otherwise.
| hyko wrote:
| The empty shelves will cause cost-push inflation, as people try
| to buy cars from a smaller available pool (e.g. substitute new
| cars for used). The price mechanism for cars will respond to a
| shortage of cars.
|
| Edit: it's maybe bad luck that this could coincide with a
| demand-pull inflation pressure, as people ease back into
| personal transit.
| baq wrote:
| Used car price charts are going vertical all over the world.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Jaguars And Range Rovers aren't "I need a car" cars. They are
| optional luxury goods. The lack of new Range Rovers and
| Jaguars won't keep anyone from getting to work or the store.
| So I don't think the effect will be nearly as drastic as it
| would be if the number of Camrys and Hiluxs had to be
| curtailed.
| nottorp wrote:
| ... but guess who's next?
| foobarian wrote:
| Cue stock drop people buying up all new cars and selling on
| Ebay for double...
| olyjohn wrote:
| Not only that, but the used car market is going to explode.
| I knew my yard full of old crappy cars would be worth
| something some day!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I'm hoping my 2003 car does not get stolen.
| xxpor wrote:
| It already has. Prices are up enormously.
| hammock wrote:
| >What has made the auto industry particularly vulnerable is its
| reliance on just-in-time delivery
|
| Invented by Toyota, ironically the reason why Japanese cars
| took over the industry a few decades ago
| cm2187 wrote:
| Chips become obsolete very quickly, and car makers create new
| models every year or two. You are not going to keep a year
| worth of inventory. Not convinced maintaining more stocks
| would have bought them much more time.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Chips aren't that expensive per-unit, and they take up very
| little space. It would not be cost prohibitive.
|
| Even better, force the cost of holding to the supplier like
| Toyota.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| It takes them 5 to 6 years to design a new model. The chips
| they use usually come with a guarantee from the
| manufacturer that they will supply it for the next 15
| years.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| I don't think chips for cars become obsolete so quickly.
| Well, self driving hardware excluded, but the other stuff
| can probably run very well on 10+ year old designs.
| jonfw wrote:
| That's really not true, Car parts are heavily
| interchangeable. Many parts are used across generations of
| cars, across different models in a make's lineup, and even
| across makes.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Automobiles don't always use the latest-and-greatest. Also:
| There's really no hard and fast rule next year's model must
| use all new electronics.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I was under the impression it was Japanese cars' superior
| quality/reliability to price ratio that caused them to take
| over the industry a few decades ago. Just in time might allow
| for lower prices, but would it also have resulted in the
| higher quality?
| marshray wrote:
| The 1970's saw multiple oil crises hit the US and the
| smaller Japanese cars' better fuel efficiency was another
| big reason for their new popularity.
| macjohnmcc wrote:
| I wonder if they have spare parts to repair existing cars or
| if they would have taken some of their spares for new
| vehicles.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Interestingly enough, Toyota modified their supply chain
| operating model post-Fukushima. So the solution isn't as
| coarse as a binary "stockpiles or JIT", but an intelligent
| assessment of risk and managing that risk granularly. Kaizen
| at its best.
|
| "Toyota may have pioneered the just-in-time manufacturing
| strategy but when it comes to chips, its decision to
| stockpile what have become key components in cars goes back a
| decade to the Fukushima disaster."
|
| "After the catastrophe severed Toyota's supply chains on
| March 11, 2011, the world's biggest automaker realised the
| lead-time for semiconductors was way too long to cope with
| devastating shocks such as natural disasters.
|
| That's why Toyota came up with a business continuity plan
| (BCP) that required suppliers to stockpile anywhere from two
| to six months' worth of chips for the Japanese carmaker,
| depending on the time it takes from order to delivery, four
| sources said."
|
| ""Toyota was, as far as we can tell, the only automaker
| properly equipped to deal with chip shortages," said a person
| familiar with Harman International, which specialises in car
| audio systems, displays and driver assistance technology."
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fukushima-
| anniversa...
| slver wrote:
| > It's fascinating that the response is to close production
| rather than increase prices.
|
| Those aren't mutually exclusive...
|
| But you can't keep production running when you have no chips.
| Throwing money at the complete lack of chips doesn't help.
| phreeza wrote:
| At some price point, you could probably substitute the chips
| with FPGAs? Though I'm not sure if that would work for cars
| without requiring some sort of recertification.
| eklitzke wrote:
| FPGAs are going to have a different form factor and higher
| power requirements, it's not so simple.
| fest wrote:
| It's not that some of those are not affected by the
| shortage.
| usrusr wrote:
| If you have a stockpile of your supplies you'll notice that
| you can't replenish them long before actually running out and
| you can therefore increase the price of your product to
| extract the highest amount from whatever limited volume that
| you can still produce. Except of course when you are working
| off an order backlog, but then emergency procurement in an
| empty market will be even more ruinous.
| wmf wrote:
| It sort of does help; chip prices have risen because
| customers are out-bidding each other. If you're willing to
| pay 10x 2019 prices you can probably get whatever chips you
| need. Many companies are deciding that's not worthwhile.
| Kliment wrote:
| Car companies are literally paying 6x to 8x 2019 prices
| right now and still can't get stock.
| 55873445216111 wrote:
| It's not correct to think that increased prices solves
| shortages. I work in automotive chip industry. We have many
| cases where no amount of money could fix the shortage
| within the next 9 months. Only choices for carmaker is to
| produce fewer cars or produce the car without the chip that
| is short (which is not always possible).
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _If you 're willing to pay 10x 2019 prices you can
| probably get whatever chips you need. Many companies are
| deciding that's not worthwhile._
|
| The problem as I understand it is a company like TSMC sells
| capacity for the some time period - like a year. The
| automakers thought people wouldn't buy cars, so they
| relinquished their slots. Turns out car demand exploded, so
| they went back to TSMC and said "hey we need those slots"
| and TSMC said "sorry your slot already got sold to nvidia".
|
| Chrsyler could offer to pay TSMC 10x more, but that that
| ultimately wouldn't do much, the slot is gone and they
| would have to buy the capacity from nvidia. nvidia is in no
| position to sell because they are also facing extreme
| demand. How would it look to nvidia if, while gamers across
| the world can't get their hands on 3080s, they sold their
| fab capacity to Chrysler for $$$$?.
|
| So money isn't solely the issue here.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| I think your simplifications could change the logic here.
|
| Chrysler does not directly buy from TSMC, they buy from
| i.e. TI, Renesas, Microchip, NXP, ...
|
| Many of those companies do still have fabs, and even if
| not, they are not competing with Nvidia. They are
| producing on the old, old fabs, at 40, even 80nm. We
| would need better numbers on where these microcontrollers
| are fabbed to be able to tell how this interferes with
| i.e. Nvidia and Apple on TSMC 5nm.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Not even 80nm. Most stuff in that space is 130nm+, some
| extremely old, but still produced ICs from early nineties
| are on 300nm+ for use on equally old automotive parts.
| Plasmoid2000ad wrote:
| I think there is also a substrate shortage
| https://www.semi.org/en/blogs/business-markets/the-
| substrate...
|
| And an Air Freight shortage even if you do pay 10x to
| jump the production queue
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/snarled-supply-chain-trips-
| up-s...
|
| I'm not even sure it's strictly speaking still true that
| automotive only uses outdated fabs. Tesla seems to have
| disrupted the use of low-end chips at least in high end
| cars, like Jaguar Land Rover.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| I think they have a pretty wide spectrum - your ABS
| controller will probably be on older node than the
| processor for the entertainment system.
| totalZero wrote:
| Change "probably" to "definitely" and I'm with you.
| Automotive chips need to be a lot more reliable than a
| PS5 GPU, and that kind of reliability takes time to test
| and prove. Not to mention that automakers try not to
| change parts unnecessarily because their economies of
| scale are only as useful as their ability to use one
| component across several models and years. If you care
| little about thermal efficiency and power consumption,
| and you're not doing extremely abstract computations,
| there's no reason whatsoever to spend tons of money on a
| smaller lithography. I was looking into this recently,
| and the price difference between some of the equipment
| involved is around two orders of magnitude from the
| leading edge to the trailing edge.
| [deleted]
| ghostpepper wrote:
| Not to detract from what you're saying but gamers aren't
| getting the cards anyway; they're going to bitcoin
| miners.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| No, they're not going to Bitcoin miners. Ethereum miners,
| sure.
| jachee wrote:
| It seems inevitable that "bitcoin" (as opposed to
| "Bitcoin") is destined to become the "kleenex" (as
| opposed to "Kleenex") of crypto.
|
| Etherium fits the bill: it's a digital (bit) currency
| (coin).
| Ekaros wrote:
| That will be actually fun. Make a company invest in some
| random crypto coins, presents movements. Just call all of
| them bitcoin... Argue that at this point it is generic
| name... Skim your fees from top.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| There's already a generic word: crypto/virtual currency.
| But Bitcoin itself isn't mined with GPUs. You can blame
| other cryptos for that shortage.
| jachee wrote:
| There's a generic word for facial tissues, too. Language
| doesn't care about the semantics.
| totalZero wrote:
| If you look at the concurrent user numbers on Steam, it
| seems like there's overwhelming engagement in the gaming
| space right now. I thought the same as you until I looked
| into it a bit more.
|
| (Also, bitcoin is mined on ASICs nowadays, but I get what
| you mean.)
| oneplane wrote:
| There are contracts that might prevent that from happening,
| just like lead times don't disappear, even if you outbid
| everyone else (if it was a bidding issue).
|
| Throwing money at a problem to try and solve it can be
| impossible in various ways.
| impalallama wrote:
| Chip shortages are at a point in the US were government
| contractors who already have right by law to jump ahead of
| anyone else in line when ordering and can probably pay
| whatever price they want are still being told that new
| shipments won't come for 16 months.
|
| There just are not enough of them being made.
| treeman79 wrote:
| So is Bitcoin screwing over the rest of the economy now?
| jachee wrote:
| All proof-of-work is. Because the "work" being "proven"
| isn't actual work. It's just waste.
| henvic wrote:
| Congratulations! I see you got downvoted for telling the
| truth.
| jachee wrote:
| After being here for 12 years, I'm used to it. ;)
| redis_mlc wrote:
| PoW = Proof of Waste :)
| wmf wrote:
| Unlikely. Everyone is screwing everyone else.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Does that make Apple's M1-in-all-devices announcement
| twice a demonstration of strength of their supply chain?
| wmf wrote:
| Yes, Apple has presumably locked in both supply and
| prices of all their components including Ax/Mx, DRAM,
| flash, LCD panels, etc.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Yes. It's really a testament to the praise of Tim Cook as
| a master of operations.
|
| It's quite a statement that Apple launched four variants
| of the same product (M1 Air, M1 Pro, M1 iMac, M1 iPad) in
| the middle of a supply chain apocalypse, all within a few
| weeks and is both delivering on schedule and even putting
| the product on sale.
|
| Call your HP rep and try to buy an LCD monitor right now.
| baybal2 wrote:
| 10-15 years ago, Cook's level of competency wouldn't have
| been anything special, but that of competent operations
| lead.
|
| The industry in the West not only shipped everything to
| outsourcers, but even forgot how to manage outsourcers as
| well, being fully reliant on turnkey services.
| ariwilson wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/HP-Pavilion-27-inch-
| Backlight-27xw/dp... ?
| goodcanadian wrote:
| We are having a similar problem, and certain chips simply
| aren't available at any price.
| SilasX wrote:
| Yeah, but -- though I haven't run the numbers -- it seems
| like Jaguar would be better off taking smaller profits
| while overbidding for the chips rather than just go idle
| and make something. Even selling at a loss may be
| preferable to the huge damage to brand from such a
| discontinuity. (Remember how hard the major internet sites
| work to avoid downtime.)
| vanviegen wrote:
| On the other hand, the car industry never seemed to care
| much for catering to instant (or even just somewhat fast)
| gratification.
|
| Even a car from stock usually takes at least a week to
| make 'road ready', which seems suboptimal from a
| marketing perspective.
| cigaser wrote:
| Capacity is sold out for several months. Next free slots
| are in several months. Even 1000x price may not get chips
| manufacturers need.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I wonder if it's possible to retool production lines to keep
| going without the chips, then add them later. It increases
| WIP but we saw this in the 80's with computers; they soldered
| sockets for those chips then only needed to snap them in to
| complete the machine.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| > It appears that just-in-time economics mean that in the event
| of a shortage your supply just goes offline. You don't get
| higher prices, just empty shelves.
|
| If the demand is there, the price increase will find its way to
| the market, either in the resale market or in alternatives to
| Jaguar Land Rover.
| ab_testing wrote:
| Exactly. Look at what is happening in the user car market for
| now. Used cars that people bought a few years ago are
| appreciating because the new ones are slow to hit the
| dealerships. Also cars are interchangeable, if a consumer is
| not able to buy a model of a luxury car, they can always buy
| another one that might be higher priced.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| Except there is tablet epoxied to the dashboard, almost.
| insert_coin wrote:
| Inflation means some things become economically impossible to
| produce, that is why the rest of the stuff becomes more
| expensive.
|
| Prices always lag behind because they are the result of all the
| economic processes that take place, not the cause, and this is
| just the beginning of the process.
| [deleted]
| 14 wrote:
| I have been looking to buy shocks for my motorcycle for months
| but the cost was very high and I wasn't sure I could spend the
| money. But every few days would check out the shocks online.
| Then I started noticing the shocks I wanted started selling out
| everywhere. You can not buy them on ebay even. I literally
| found the last place with a set and bought them. I did so
| because I noticed that after everywhere sold out the
| manufacturers website has suddenly increased their MSRP by $50.
| The place I found them at had them at the old price so I pulled
| the trigger before they went up.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| Well, used car prices continue to increase.
|
| Some one or two year old used vehicles sell for above their
| MSRP new prices now.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Except it takes weeks/months to prep a fab to start making
| these chips. If the car companies start getting their orders
| then switch back to JIT manufacturing, then the fabs won't want
| to waste these months idle thrashing the manufacturing lines
| across products.
|
| Raising prices only helps if you can get more supply at a
| higher price, and you can't when it takes months to start.
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm curious if automotive systems used more generic controllers
| for cabin systems if shortages like this would be less or more
| severe.
|
| If the AC and the power seats and the cabin lights used the moral
| equivalent of a raspberry pi compute engine, would we see supply
| harder to disrupt, or massive consolidation that just makes these
| problems worse, for instance every single car plant shutting down
| for two weeks out of the same three months as the pause wends its
| way through the supply chain. Today a Chevrolet plant gets the
| only truckload, but Ram doesn't run out until tomorrow due to
| transit delays.
| amluto wrote:
| The RPi compute engine is a PCB, a fairly large number of
| components, and a complicated chipset meant for video
| processing and Linux. This is not what your power seat wants,
| and it's probably considerably more expensive than what your
| seat wants.
|
| In any case, the current bottleneck is, to a vague
| approximation, a bottleneck on total output. An RPi compute
| module has a lot more mm^2 of silicon than a little ECU. You
| also likely can't make a good RPi compute-like module on the
| larger-feature-size fabs that make ECUs.
| nottorp wrote:
| Also a RPi won't survive at car temperatures.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > I'm curious if automotive systems used more generic
| controllers for cabin systems if shortages like this would be
| less or more severe.
|
| that wouldn't help. generic and not-generic controllers would
| still use ICs, and ICs are still what we're slowed down on. a
| more generic design might have to use more (or more
| complicated) ICs as well, to have more tolerant inputs.
|
| more generic/standardized controllers might help if there were
| limits on printed circuit board manufacturing, or board
| assembly capacity. (as those things get cheaper/easier/faster
| the more identical units you make. and yes, that applies to ICs
| as well, but all of the widely used microcontrollers /
| jellybean parts are already produced in huge volumes.)
| wlesieutre wrote:
| The mass market parts probably wouldn't stand up to car
| environments, these are expected to operate for years with
| temperatures that range from well below freezing in the winter
| to over 150 parked in the sun when it's hot out.
| hinkley wrote:
| > the moral equivalent of a raspberry pi compute engine
|
| I did not mean mass market parts when I said "moral
| equivalent" since that was not clear. I meant automotive
| grade controllers.
|
| I guess the real problem, besides shortages of the IC on the
| board as someone else said, would be connectors. The circuit
| boards aren't just built different, the connectors are
| ruggedized and in some cases water/dirt resistant too.
| There's no way you'll use the same connector for a five way
| adjustable seat as for the cabin light controls. And if you
| did you couldn't put any of them next to each other or
| someone plugs the defroster into the cruise control and
| somebody dies.
|
| Best you could do is a standard circuit board and custom
| housing that has the wiring harness, and at that point things
| look pretty similar to the status quo.
|
| Also relays in that situation are probably a bigger part of
| the wiring than I'm allowing.
| colechristensen wrote:
| There are automotive rated parts which comes down to an
| increased temperature range and (where applicable) vibration
| tolerance, electrical transients, etc.
|
| Sometimes it involves different materials but usually it's
| just more testing on an increased range.
|
| For example a part which handles electric current might be
| rated to 100mA at an ambient temperature of 20C but only 40mA
| at 60C or -40C.
|
| Regular consumer electronics you can just ignore these ranges
| as unreasonable but a car is going to get that hot or that
| cold so you have to have parts rated for those conditions.
| dapids wrote:
| Problem is everything needs to be automotive grade components,
| and if the supply is already low such a type or in contention,
| they are going to cost a heck of a lot more than the absurdity
| which is the 100% additional cost for a automotive grade
| resistor or IC versus a consumer level component.
| mulmen wrote:
| This is already the case. A new Chevy pickup and a new Ford
| pickup have the same _transmission_. BMW and Mercedes buy
| transmissions from ZF or other vendors. Bosch provides engine
| management systems to like... everyone. I 'd be astonished if
| there are more than a dozen power seat motors in use across the
| entire new car fleet.
|
| Tesla is a notable exception because they actually make their
| own components, like the Model X Gull wing door actuators.
| hinkley wrote:
| I meant within a single vehicle but that's probably the best
| you're going to get.
|
| It wasn't until I was an adult living on the coast that I
| understood this and why Midwestern auto shops were so
| resistant to foreign cars. This process was still in
| development, and so while one set of brake assembly might fit
| twenty Chevy and Ford vehicles over a five model year period,
| you were always having to special order parts for the "weird"
| cars because you couldn't keep them in inventory, and so you
| had to deal with a hostile customer who didn't understand why
| their wife's car got brakes in one day and the Subaru was
| going to take a week. They storm off to another shop and get
| the same answer.
| mulmen wrote:
| Ah yeah that is different then. I do wonder where these
| supply chains broke down specifically. Is it compute
| modules or specific chips/components? How feasible is it to
| have interchangeable compute modules with different
| internal implementations?
|
| My car was available with I think six different batteries
| depending on options but they are also two entirely
| different chemistries (AGM and lead-acid). If there is a
| lead-acid battery shortage for some reason presumably
| everything _could_ have been AGM.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The car itself doesn't care about the battery chemistry
| at all - it's actually not even a different chemistry,
| only a different way to build them -, it's always a
| nominal voltage of 12V and a charge voltage of about 14V.
| You can put in whatever battery you want, in theory.
|
| Practically, your choice will be influenced by:
|
| - price (lead-acid are cheaper)
|
| - usage frequency (AGM have lower self discharge rates
| and can stand up for a year or more without charging,
| while a lead-acid will grow sulfate crystals in a matter
| of months)
|
| - peak current capacity and temperature range (again, AGM
| are better, and you _must_ use a battery that can supply
| the crank with enough amps... and note that the crank
| will need more power in colder climates)
|
| - capacity (obviously... depending on options like a
| beefy sound system, service lights, antitheft systems or
| seat heaters, you need higher capacity)
| mulmen wrote:
| My car absolutely cares about the battery chemistry
| because it optimizes the charging based on battery
| performance and capability. It also uses this information
| for the condition based service to indicate when the
| battery needs replaced and as an input to identify other
| electrical problems such as excessive discharge.
| protoman3000 wrote:
| I fear our upcoming high inflation will be abused as an example
| to legitimize harsh austerity in the future, because liars will
| draw the causality with the expansive monetary policy of the
| 2010s and not with the Corona pandemic. They already conveniently
| forget that there was a flu pandemic in the beginning of the 20th
| Century.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| same. but I truly don't think we will have large inflation.
| This is just creakiness of a machine restarting after being
| turned to a lower setting based on unmet expectations of a long
| span of limited consumer demand.
| whereis wrote:
| Unscientific dogma: Mother nature is telling us through Taiwan's
| drought to slow down and redesign chips to be secure.
|
| My late model American vehicle is my home. Earlier this week, the
| locks kept popping open when I was trying to go to sleep. Nobody
| else besides me has a remote entry key.
| j8014 wrote:
| I hopped into a Jeep Cherokee that I thought was mine and drove
| it down the road for a minute before realizing I was not in my
| vehicle. Keys are funny like that.
| whereis wrote:
| You'd think keyfob security would be worked out by now (just
| look at the prevalence of skeleton key software defined
| radios amongst the grayhat crowd). There's probably a
| limitation in security complexity due to limited power
| availability in the keyfob.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| How can that be an argument, when we can sign secure
| transactions using RFID?
| whereis wrote:
| Ah, cool. Sounds like there's no excuse. My mistake.
|
| I mistakenly assumed you'd need some kind of
| cryptographic key signing handshake via active
| electronics from within the keyfob to achieve secure
| comms with the host vehicle, and that such a requirement
| may have been some kind of implementation limiting
| factor, security-wise.
| ArcFeind wrote:
| I checked a Jaguar dealer page now and I see they're still
| offering finance incentives which I didn't except since their
| inventory is taking such a hit. Plus luxury cars have been
| selling for over MSRP on most popular models for the last year.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's better to raise the net price by raising the price and
| then offer incentives from a sales perspective than to leave
| the price alone and remove incentives. People feel good when
| they get "discounts" or "deals".
| somethingwitty1 wrote:
| Many finance incentives are usually restricted to current
| dealer inventory and previous model years. They also get people
| in the door, since often times, people don't truly qualify for
| the advertised rates (if we are talking about financing terms).
| Jaguar is still suffering from depressed sales (though it has
| been getting better), so they may feel the demand isn't there
| to get those vehicles off their lots and increasing
| prices/reducing financing incentives would potentially make
| that worse.
|
| Of course, it might just be that they are slow to react and
| changes will be reflected in the coming weeks.
| decafninja wrote:
| Jaguar is probably not considered on the same level of demand
| as say, BMW, Benz, Audi, or even Lexus. The fact that they
| were notorious for having problems probably doesn't help.
|
| They make gorgeous cars though, with good handling and driver
| engagement. A V8 (or maybe electric!) F-Type is my attainable
| dream car.
| seomint wrote:
| It's toilet paper all the way down...
| pbreit wrote:
| I don't understand how cars, which sell in relatively low
| quantities and use relatively unsophisticated chips, would be
| delayed by chip shortages.
| dvh wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26891094
| koreanguy wrote:
| European chip production within 3 years, Asia has become
| expensive and unreliable.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| "Other automakers purchase much less valuable silicon content,
| and become less of a priority when compared to Tesla, who designs
| chips in house, secures wafer supply from foundries directly, and
| buys chips directly from the various chip designers like NXP,
| Infineon, and so forth," according to a note from Cho Research.
| "They don't outsource the design of their chip stack; they in-
| source wherever possible and work extremely closely with their
| suppliers."
|
| https://www.benzinga.com/news/earnings/21/04/20771098/tesla-...
|
| Tesla doesn't seem to have a chip problem.
|
| this whole auto chip shortage is auto maker's own f'ck up
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| Just because Tesla and Toyota did something that ended up right
| doesn't necessarily mean all the other auto manufacturers did
| something wrong. I don't the blame the other auto companies and
| think their actions to be prudent at the time. We have a global
| pandemic for the first time in 100 years where people were
| required to not travel and stay indoors. Seems logical to
| expect demand for automobiles to go down and cut back on
| ordering chips. Turns out reality was the exact opposite.
| Certainly something I wouldn't have been able to predict.
| iscrewyou wrote:
| That is exactly the situation they are in. They have
| plans/contingency plans to make sure they don't end up in a
| similar situation while the other manufactures don't. Their
| plans paid off and the others' bet not on having the
| plan...well that also paid off.
| sircastor wrote:
| I'm willing to bet Tesla runs into this in just a few months.
| This is coming in waves across the industry, and I doubt Tesla
| is equipped to deal with it any better than any other
| manufacturer.
|
| (Full disclosure: I work for an Automotive OEM. I do not have
| any inside knowledge about the shortage in general, or how it's
| affecting my company. All my comments are from my own
| observation of public news sources.)
| [deleted]
| jonfw wrote:
| That doesn't scale. The reason Tesla's not having problems is
| because they have first dibs. That only works for them because
| the companies who don't have first dibs are taking the hit, not
| because this is some solution to the issue of shortages on the
| macro-economic level. If everybody did what Tesla did and in-
| sourced, somebody who in-sourced would be taking the hit.
| [deleted]
| reactspa wrote:
| Recently there was news about India's push to incentivize chip-
| fab makers to start chip-production in India.
|
| I thought the threat to Taiwan (from China) was driving that.
|
| But buried in the news was that Tata was going to build a chip-
| fab in India.
|
| Tata owns Jaguar Land Rover.
| throw7 wrote:
| subaru is also shutting down some plant(s) temporarily due to
| chip availability.
| dpedu wrote:
| I find it bothersome that this situation is referred to as simply
| a shortage without any mention of the incorrect predictions or
| decisions the automakers made that lead to it.
| TillE wrote:
| "Just-in-time" logistics are by definition highly susceptible
| to disruptions. Of course it can make sense in some cases, but
| I've never understood it as a near-universally applied
| doctrine. There are serious drawbacks.
| snemvalts wrote:
| Are you seriously suggesting something as complex as this could
| have been predicted with certainty? Seems like retrospective
| wisdom.
| Leherenn wrote:
| But it's affecting everyone in electronics as far as I know. My
| company is not in automotive, but pretty much every lead time
| has exploded, prices have increased and some pieces are just
| not available at all.
|
| The automakers might have messed up their predictions, but
| they're not disrupting the whole electronics market like that.
| Kliment wrote:
| They actually did disrupt the entire market like that. They
| cancelled all their orders, causing fab capacity to be
| redirected to other markets, then they came back and asked
| for their orders back, at any price, and everyone who was
| already making something else switched their now fewer
| available slots to service the car industry. See
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26842924
| jonvk wrote:
| Well, at least less of these heavily polluting cars is the best
| thing that can happen for public health.
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...
| beiller wrote:
| I think car manufacturers have been specializing their chips and
| electronics more and more to avoid 3rd party servicing and now we
| see the fallout which could still be a win for them. Just jack up
| the prices! How about we standardize the chips used in automotive
| manufacturing to help alleviate this problem and cut down the
| number of unique SKUs fabs have to make.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| That's an extremely bad take. Cars have had and shared ICs
| since they became mainstream. Bosch shared electronics between
| Volvo, Saab, Porsche even BMW bikes as far back as the 80s.
| Often times parts like air fuel meters, sensors, etc are all
| designed and manufactured upstream by companies like Bosch or
| Febi or other companies that sell systems to manufacturers.
|
| We have platforms, like the GM2900 that many cars were based on
| as well to reduce numbers of skus
|
| Shortages are shortages
| beiller wrote:
| I think it's fair to say cars today are packed with more and
| more full blown cpus since 2010 onwards and so much of it it
| just junk. Maybe partially due to safety regs like mandatory
| backup cameras but android auto and car play? Notice how
| difficult it is to get aftermarket android auto (in my
| experience). Why can't it just hook up to my cell phone? But
| to be fair I am totally shooting from the hip here, and the
| article isn't making it clear which chips are in short
| supply. But as some other commenters pointed out, if it is
| really purely a shortage, why don't they just jack up the
| price. These are luxury brand cars I don't think consumers
| aren't willing to pay.
|
| Have you heard of the automotive right to repair initiative
| from 2012? Why do you think such a thing was necessary? And
| guess the main method used to circumvent right to repair
| automotive laws that were passed in the USA? More complex
| electronics.
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| > What has made the auto industry particularly vulnerable is its
| reliance on just-in-time delivery, where parts are brought in
| when needed, rather than being stockpiled.
|
| In another version of my life I was a truck-driver bringing parts
| to Ford/Chrysler/GM/Honda/Toyota on a daily basis. I've done this
| for many trucking companies, and the warning/threat that you get
| at 'orientation' (aka training for 15 minutes) is the same for
| all of them:
|
| GM Charges us $24,000/hour if we are late for our window by more
| then 15 minutes.
|
| I'm sure the other automakers had similar threats, but I only
| ever heard it about GM.
| jacques_chester wrote:
| > _What has made the auto industry particularly vulnerable is its
| reliance on just-in-time delivery, where parts are brought in
| when needed, rather than being stockpiled._
|
| This idea has gotten a lot of play lately. But the unstated
| alternative is to somehow perfectly forecast future demand for
| parts. That's very difficult in general and doubly difficult
| during a global pandemic. And, in fact, well-practiced lean
| outfits are better at knowing which inputs are potentially most
| disruptive, because they already obsess over lead times for
| everything.
|
| Without lean practices you just wind up with giants piles of
| almost random inventory. That you'd have wound up with a giant
| pile of CPUs is a total crapshoot. But you would absolutely
| positively have a bunch of stuff you don't need _and never will_.
| And that inventory would choke the whole company to death.
|
| The whole idea that JIT destroyed some glorious, flawless past is
| the Nirvana fallacy. "Oh, supply chain disruptions happen at all,
| therefore JIT is entirely useless". It's just a silly idea and
| needs to be mocked at every opportunity.
| mmmBacon wrote:
| I don't know any chip manufacturers that shutdown due to COVID.
| Everyone has been shipping the entire time and fabs are at
| capacity. The way chip manufacturing works is that you get a slot
| and if you cancel they fill your slot with something else. There
| have been fab issues but these have been unrelated to COVID and
| would have happened anyway.
|
| To me this seems like auto industry trying to shift blame away
| from their supply chain management to their vendors.
| waschl wrote:
| What I couldnt find out so far is what the chip manufacturers
| are producing instead of automotive chips then? There must be
| another industry which has a significantly increased need or
| will get a lot of chips earlier than planned. Wondering which
| industry that will be.
|
| Cant be the GPU market either ;-)
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Car manufacturers released all of their slots at the
| beginning of 2020 so those were sold to the entertainment
| industry instead. Turns out there is a price on not dying and
| it's "a car instead of public transportation".
| mschuster91 wrote:
| It actually _is_ GPUs and CPUs.
|
| AMD growth is gone through the roof in general computing, and
| they're the sole supplier for both PS5 and Xbox's CPU and GPU
| chips. Unlike Intel who have their own fabs, AMD is locked
| into TSMC - and when auto manufacturers relinquished slots,
| they went in.
|
| Nvidia ships a boatload of chips for Nintendo Switch plus
| GPUs for almost all altcoin miners that can be mined with
| GPUs _and_ everyday regular gamers.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Maybe it's some state actor piling up bitcoin miners :p
| bluesquared wrote:
| Texas Instruments has a facility that has had output reduced
| due to COVID staffing issues for at least the past 6 months.
| They produce parts that I use in my 1000 pc/year medical device
| that Toyota and GM vacuum up at a _much_ higher rate. Hard to
| compete against those heavyweights for available stock. I 'm
| sure there are other manufacturers encountering the same. This
| isn't just the fancy very-small nm processes, it's effecting
| the whole industry.
|
| There have also been unfortunate disasters such as a fire at
| Renesas https://www.yahoo.com/news/renesas-says-plans-restore-
| full-0... that have affected lead times.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Has there been any detailed reporting on the root cause of
| the fire? It's strange that an electrical fire can start in
| the first place in what should be an extremely well-
| engineered factory, let alone spread to over 6000 square
| feet, and if that's possible there, it'd be great to learn
| more to avoid it elsewhere.
| avmich wrote:
| Funny nobody considers designs which don't rely on complex chips
| - and simple ones can be made cheaply in many places. Are we that
| demanding that WiFi and USB are required for cars?
|
| I'd buy a simpler car instead of having no car any day.
| [deleted]
| Zenst wrote:
| I was looking for some graph to show the average number of
| silicon chips in a car over time, alas nothing. Some indication I
| guess from growth forcast like
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/want-to-invest-in-self-dri...
|
| But not ideal. Though all that, I wonder if this was a perfect
| storm and with the increases and demands for all things smart, it
| may be that we are playing catchup with a moving goalpost for a
| few years yet.
| Kye wrote:
| You'd think with decades of CAD experience we could figure out
| how to build a chipless car that has all the benefits of
| computers in cars and none of the downsides of carburetors. How
| long will this have to go on before someone considers it?
| devwastaken wrote:
| I can hear the youtube video now "how I replaced my unavailable
| ECM with an arduino"
|
| I wonder if anyone has documented the various sensors and
| algorithms used for basic vehicle functionality.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Good luck with the ECM. A college did a custom one and it was
| alot of work.
|
| However you can probably hack together something easier that
| follows the AUTOSAR standard. E.g. the window elevator conteol
| unit or something.
| cronix wrote:
| Rovers, boats, drones, planes, helicopters, submersibles, all
| done with Arduinos or similar. It seems it can be done if one
| really wanted to. When I think about all of the things my drone
| can do that are seemingly more complex than a non-self driving
| car can do it seems more than plausible.
| https://ardupilot.org/ardupilot/
| bri3d wrote:
| Yes, Speeduino, Megasquirt 1 (not the newer closed source
| ones), RusEFI are all open-source engine control software.
|
| Not even in the same dimension as commercial stuff, but the
| primitives are there.
| pradn wrote:
| Toyota was one of the leaders in just-in-time manufacturing, yet
| they're doing just fine with the chip shortage. They stockpile
| parts, and try to understand how they work in depth.
|
| > After the [Fukushima] catastrophe severed Toyota's supply
| chains on March 11, 2011, the world's biggest automaker realised
| the lead-time for semiconductors was way too long to cope with
| devastating shocks such as natural disasters.
|
| > That's why Toyota came up with a business continuity plan (BCP)
| that required suppliers to stockpile anywhere from two to six
| months' worth of chips for the Japanese carmaker, depending on
| the time it takes from order to delivery, four sources said.
|
| > The sources said Toyota has another advantage over some rivals
| when it comes to chips thanks to its long-standing policy of
| ensuring it understands all the technology used in its cars,
| rather than relying on suppliers to provide "black boxes".
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fukushima-anniversa...
| riskable wrote:
| If all the manufacturers did what Toyota did that would have
| exacerbated the chip shortage.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| Not if the other car companies realized that the lead time
| being so long meant that cancelling their orders was a
| horrible idea.
| spfzero wrote:
| I think I know what you're getting at: If all of the
| manufacturers suddenly requested private inventories to be
| set up, the chip manufacturer would be dedicating all of its
| production to filling up warehouses rather than shipping.
|
| It seems like Toyota was farsighted in this.
| fgonzag wrote:
| That's backwards. It would had prevented the shortage.
|
| The shortage is happening because manufacturers cancelled
| their chip orders from their suppliers because of reduced
| sales forecasts due to COVID.
|
| When the manufacturers cancelled their orders from their
| suppliers, the supplies cancelled the orders from the
| foundries, which cancelled their slots and gave them to
| consumer electronics which had increased demand.
|
| When sales of new cars rose, manufacturers called their
| suppliers for more parts, which called the foundries to
| increase production only to find out their previous slots had
| been sold.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Well also the climate induced power outages in Texas
| knocked out three (4?) foundries in the Austin area from
| suppliers that tended to supply embedded customers.
| Foundries really really hate to be interrupted and getting
| them back up seems to be taking longer than anticipated.
| oivey wrote:
| The stockpiled chips would have been made before the
| shortage, so that doesn't follow.
| totalZero wrote:
| Toyota also part owns Denso. They're closer to their supply
| chain than many of their competitors.
| NDizzle wrote:
| No wonder Denso parts are so good.
| redstripe wrote:
| I don't know if we should give Toyota any praise over their
| supply chain management. Consider the situation with their
| electric vehicles.
|
| The plug-in hybrid "rav4 prime" has a 2 year wait list. They
| sold 3200 last year because they don't have any battery
| capacity. https://insideevs.com/news/466641/us-toyota-
| rav4-prime-sales...
|
| This is a bit of digression on this thread, but it's stuff like
| this that makes it seem like traditional car companies are
| still out to lunch vs Tesla. They're just too slow to adapt and
| give up what has worked for decades.
| ethagknight wrote:
| This may be a dumb question, but is it still "Just In Time" if
| the parts are just stockpiled on shelves owned by someone else?
| noelsusman wrote:
| That has always been the core innovation of JIT. Offloading
| inventory costs onto suppliers makes your books look a lot
| better. Toyota did make a bunch of other improvements to
| streamline their manufacturing processes, but the just in
| time part is really just bullying suppliers into taking on
| some of your cost and risk.
| _s wrote:
| Partially - suppliers can offset that by increasing their
| cost to do business; but also most contracts in that world
| are multi-year deals with ranges of minima / maxima for
| quantity, time etc.
| notyourwork wrote:
| I had the same question, I'm not versed on manufacturing
| processes but "Just in time" would seem to imply inventory is
| nearly 0 and as parts come in, they are used for assembly and
| go right back out the door.
|
| Perhaps they realized the limits of JIT and have looked at
| storying inventory based on the impact to assembly
| continuity?
| wheelinsupial wrote:
| Worked in automotive, not at Toyota.
|
| > storying inventory based on the impact to assembly
| continuity?
|
| It's always been about that.
|
| JIT can be looked at as, "right part in the right quantity
| at the right time." That can mean "milk runs" where
| assemblies are delivered to the final assembly plant twice
| a day. An AM delivery where the last assembly is bolted to
| a car as the PM delivery arrives. Or it means "kanban
| orders" where 1 week supply of parts is delivered on a
| Monday and a refresh the next Monday. Or it means you buy
| in bulk and get 3 months supply at once.
|
| JIT and everything around "Lean manufacturing" and the
| "Toyota Production System (TPS)" are ideals to strive for.
| Not everything in Toyota operates according to the ideals.
| There are certain fundamental things (e.g., stability in
| material, personnel, machinery, and methods) that need to
| be in place before starting to reduce inventory.
|
| When suppliers have trouble with providing defect free
| parts, the orders start to increase in quantity and
| decrease in frequency. These can be subject to 100%
| incoming inspection if the supplier's quality comes into
| question enough.
| pradn wrote:
| I think the article is implying that they moved away from a
| "pure" JIT model, to somewhat of a hybrid model. Their in-
| depth knowledge of their suppliers is orthogonal to their
| stockpiling, but it still helps them plan better.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Sure. That's technically not inventory for tax purposes.
| goodoldneon wrote:
| Having the supplier store them still uses the same
| distribution network as if they were shipped directly. If
| Toyota stored them, they'd need to develop an equally robust
| network from their warehouses to their factories. It's more
| expensive to maintain your own distribution network and
| warehouses than to just pay the supplier to store stuff
| yardie wrote:
| This is really ironic given the fact that Toyota was really at
| the cutting edge of 90s JIT manufacturing and this was one of
| worries that was raised in the. Their response, "we have
| multiple sources for parts." [0] But over time those multiple
| partners migrated to the same geographical locations, and then
| an earthquake hit.
|
| [0] I'm totally paraphrasing here as I remember reading it in
| some magazine years ago.
| jacques_chester wrote:
| They famously maintained production after that earthquake.
| It's a common case study of how to adapt to supply chain
| shocks by being good at running a supply chain in the first
| place. All the things they needed for resilience -- plentiful
| data, high trust relationships with suppliers, flexible and
| skillful workforce -- were things they had built up to
| support their JIT manufacturing capability.
| eloff wrote:
| I bet Tesla's decision to design and manufacture their own
| machine learning chips for their "self-driving" functionality is
| looking pretty smart now. They have their own contracts with the
| fab companies to produce them. These are not the only kinds of
| chips that go into cars by a long shot these days, but it is the
| biggest ticket one.
|
| That was a multi-billion dollar, very bold and risky bet that
| paid off. How many car companies do you know where they decided
| to take on industry leaders like Nvidia and Intel and actually
| produce a better product? That's really quite remarkable.
|
| If GM said tomorrow that they were going to build better machine-
| learning chips than Nvidia, we'd all get a good laugh at that.
| baybal2 wrote:
| You see Tesla's BOM?
|
| I bet thet have the very same problem, it's not only the
| dashboard computer they need chips for.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| But I get a sensation that they are more into off the shelf
| parts than traditional automakers. SpaceX is also known to
| use consumer grade chips in their rockets
| eloff wrote:
| They're also big on doing things themselves if they can't
| get a supplier at the right price.
| eloff wrote:
| That is highly possible, I did allude to that.
| Plasmoid2000ad wrote:
| Maybe. Things that succeed in the face of an issue no one
| predicted don't really stand out as smart - just lucky. It
| might prove smart in the long run for many other reasons of
| course.
|
| For all we know, Tesla could be locked into TSMC like everyone
| else, while Nvidia has their current high-end chips on Samsung
| as well relationships with TSMC.
| eloff wrote:
| Luck often looks smart in hindsight. You're right of course
| that it was lucky.
|
| I think it was a smart decision for many reasons, that worked
| out well. It was also a big risk.
| jryle70 wrote:
| The beauty of luck is that it can be used practically any
| time as explanation for success. Tesla bet big on vertical
| integration. Who knows what they took into consideration but
| it was surely bold since they were not as flush with cash as
| they are now.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| Not TSMC but Samsung. Tesla have wafer agreement with Samsung
| for 14nm and 5nm.
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _These are not the only kinds of chips that go into cars by a
| long shot these days, but it is the biggest ticket one_
|
| Still can't build the car without the rest of them:
|
| https://electrek.co/2021/02/25/tesla-shuts-down-model-3-prod...
|
| Tesla said their ambition was to out-Toyota Toyota in
| manufacturing. They haven't:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fukushima-anniversa...
| mhh__ wrote:
| > we'd all get a good laugh at that.
|
| And who are we to laugh?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-04-23 23:00 UTC)