One important part of the chip shortage is the massive amount of price gouging going on.<p>Every IC is being bought up by new 3rd party distributors to scalp to desperate electronics manufacturers.<p>Take a look at this chip we are just now crossing as an example, click on 'Non-authorized stocking distributors':<p><a href="https://octopart.com/tps2052bdgnr-texas+instruments-699312?r=sp" rel="nofollow">https://octopart.com/tps2052bdgnr-texas+instruments-699312?r...</a><p>Win Source has a bunch, but you will pay 6x the cost. We have been quoted even 100x the list price for some ICs on our boards.<p>Luckily as a small company we are nimble and can mostly cross to similar components, and have been for months now, but a whole board assembly run can be stopped with a single component being impossible to find out of hundreds on the BOM.<p>Having scalpers in the mix raising the price for all components worries me that the chip shortage might not end for many years, as they can self-fund by raising their prices to stock up on new supply. Not to mention the higher number of random failures as counterfeits easily find their way into the supply chain without 'authorized' distributors.
@kliment summarized the why pretty well:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26931498" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26931498</a><p>Curious if this is true for all manufacturers.
What I'll never understand is why carmakers don't take advantage of this situation and address a market that's been literally BEGGING for decades for a new product:<p>A simple, basic car, with the ONLY electronic control being for:<p>- Valve timing
- Fuel injection
- Oxygen and throttle
- Emissions<p>There's a market for budget and privacy oriented customers that all carmakers seem to have ignored for two decades now. Give us a simple car with no GPS navigation, ass warmers, tire pressure sensors, telemetry, backup cameras, USB chargers, proximity detectors, traction control, keyless entry, remote climate control, etc.<p>But instead of addressing this market, these carmakers have decided to throw up their hands and shut down production or pile up unfinished inventory waiting on chips. It makes precisely zero sense.<p>I understand the re-engineering is a cost. But when you're simply removing existing features, this should be a fairly negligible one.<p>edit: I wasn't aware any of these luxury features were mandated by governments. Apologies, and disregard.
> Stellantis has halted production at other plants, including in Europe and Canada, forecasting that it would make 1.4 million fewer vehicles this year due to the chip shortage.<p>For perspective:<p>> Combined sales of FCA and PSA totaled 6,206,000 units in 2020, down by 22% compared to 2019 figures. When the two companies announced their decision to merge, they became the world’s 4th largest automaker by sales volume. It was only outsold by Volkswagen Group, Toyota and Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance. With 7,907,000 vehicles sold in 2019, FCA-PSA (which was not called Stellantis by then), was bigger than GM and Hyundai-Kia. One year later, these two outperformed Stellantis.<p><a href="https://fiatgroupworld.com/2021/02/14/stellantis-sold-6-2-million-vehicles-in-2020-dropping-two-positions-in-the-top-10-global-ranking/" rel="nofollow">https://fiatgroupworld.com/2021/02/14/stellantis-sold-6-2-mi...</a><p>If I'm reading this right, pre-pandemic sales were ~8 million. So a cut 1.4 million due to chip shortages represents an 18% drop. But compared to 2020, the drop is 23%.<p>That's disastrous hit for any company to withstand.<p>I'm curious how much of this is actually due to chip supply vs. how much could be due to other factors, but blamed on chip supply.
Tesla has done a decent job of mitigating some of the chip shortages since they are so vertically integrated. Though obviously Tesla produces way less cars than Toyota/Honda/VW. But other manufacturers simply can't do this even if they wanted to since they outsource most of this stuff.<p>> “We were able to substitute alternative chips, and then write the firmware in a matter of weeks,” Musk said. “It’s not just a matter of swapping out a chip; you also have to rewrite the software.”<p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22595060/tesla-chip-shortage-software-rewriting-ev-processor" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22595060/tesla-chip-short...</a>
Man - the magnitude / impact of these chips shortages on autos in particular is crazy.<p>Regardless of Opel popularity, in the US the F-150 was a best selling vehicle and massive cash cow and they had unfinished vehicles sitting out. These chips have GOT to be a relatively low margin / somewhat lower cost item (ie, feature size can be large). What a miss not to have more coverage for them.
Idk about recent years,but opel has already been looking at closing sites in Germany, Bochum I believe was the most recent one. This smells like an excuse to do so eventually (Whether justified or not)
"Some 1,300 workers employed at the plant will be temporarily laid off, Opel said, with a separate plant in France picking up some of the production."<p>Perhaps a very convenient chip shortage? Anyhow, why not build a car without electronics, gps, g4, microphones, voice control, tracking and screens. Because that is exactly what I want.
One thing that's going to come out of this crisis is cars being repriced as not just engine + wheels + seats but rather a consumer tech gadget. I expect prices to keep climbing well after supply chain issues have been solved. Piling on subscription pricing is next (and is already happening in a lot of cases).
The aspect of the problem not talked about is that a lot of automotive chips are really, really old.<p>And they are old, because of many certification requirements set partially by the industry, and a few odd governments.<p>In reality, most of them are both less reliable, and harder to work with in comparison to open market parts.<p>The only two things I seen chips with micron scale nodes used in my life were: air conditioner boards, and car parts.
They used to be big back in the day when hot hatches ruled and we had Golf vs Astra (Vauxhall for the UK) but then we got crossovers and mini-SUV and GM had their own problems to invest in the brand.<p>Nowadays they make rebadged Peugeot/Citroen cars.
I hope a lot of car industry supply chain managers are losing their jobs now. Worst people ever. Hurt their suppliers, hurt their own company, out of sheet arrogance and ignorance.<p>On the other hand, good for us, any ICE car or car in general that is not produced is good for the environment.
Any carmaker whose cars can't sell will be happy to get their suppliers to not supply them with chips.<p>Let's see how the main EV manufacturers will procure their chips in the coming months.
I'm curious to see a more up to date analysis of the chip shortage. My understanding is that when it started last year, the problem was caused by unprecedented demand for silicon fueled by people being stuck at home. Factories were pumping out chips at maximum capacity and it still wasn't enough to meet demand.<p>As people return to vacationing and social activities as the vaccine became available, I expected demand to slowly come back down to meet supply, but the problem seems to only be getting worse.
We are in for The Great Supply Crisis. This is everywhere from fuel to agriculture to chips. I believe the high level picture is that a significant percentage of labor force has decided not to return to work and that causes staffing crisis and that causes reduced outputs. Even though chip industry don't suffer from staffing, <i>their suppliers</i> do.
Edit: Too many downvotes for my view that this Opel case is yet another symptom of the wrong handling of the panedmic by any governments, leading to inflation and supply chain disruptions.<p>If opinions are downvoted then I do not need to participate.