19 ms·

Jaguar Land Rover to suspend output due to chip shortage

363 points by jchrisa 5y ago

avmich 5y ago
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.
- totalZero 5y ago
  Even if you get rid of wifi and USB -- even if you get rid of the radio -- you would still want electronic ignition, fuel injection, antilock brakes, traction control, airbags, onboard diagnostics... the list goes on. It's not realistic nowadays to expect a carmaker to sell vehicles that don't depend upon silicon. Ironically, it's not the complex chips that are the issue. It's the little basic ones that have been around for years. Hall effect sensors and things like that. Perhaps nobody ever thought they could be jolted by abnormal market behavior. Not to mention that prettyuch all the major automakers have laid out a timeline for some or all of their product lines to go electric. Not sure how you would build an electric vehicle without semiconductors.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    I believe it is impossible design and to sell a car that does not use these chips in Europe. Probably also other large markets. You can not get sufficient safety and emissions without them.
    - avmich 5y ago
      My whole point is that it is, in fact, possible to have many - practically all important - of those features without complex chips - at best with more simple ones, which don't require latest semiconductor technologies to manufacture. I won't itemize to GP, but at least remember that onboard computer is a relatively recent addition for cars.
      - Ekaros 5y ago
        But those are exactly the stuff in question here.
        avmich 5y ago
        I believe you're wrong. Look at this part - > you would still want electronic ignition, fuel injection, antilock brakes, traction control, airbags, onboard diagnostics... the list goes on. Fuel injection is quite important; I drove a car with carburetor, but fuel injection was winning even before onboard computers. However you can have one with hardly any electronics; a rather small and simple analog circuit can work. Electronic ignition begs question: what's that electronic in that? Electrical spark was used in cars, I guess, from the invention of internal combustion engines; but it's not electronic. Timing of the ignition? Cars can and were built without that; even if exists, it's something which sounds rather similar to fuel injection issue. Antilock braking was invented and used as a mechanical system. Same with airbags. Traction control at least evolved from mechanical systems. Onboard diagnostics is nice, but periodical checkups served people well for a long time. In other words, we can have a working car with necessary functions made possible either completely without electronics, or with analog electronics. In the worst case we might use small-scale integrated circuits - and that is already for functions which weren't that popular less than a generation ago. My point, which I believe was misunderstood, is that it looks like a mistake to design a modern car in such a way that it can't be produced without relying on several exclusive manufacturers of high-quality semiconductors, while those semiconductors aren't critical for basic functions of the car. Those custom chips can't even be replaced with alternatives! Make at least an extension module, which would provide all those relatively recent features. I don't understand that it worth stopping car production in case those non-essential - even if quite convenient - functions can't be supplied at the same time as basic necessities.
      - lostapathy 5y ago
        Cars have had "onboard computers" for decades, they just don't have a user interface that resembles the screen on your desk.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pmichaud 5y ago
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?
- kalleboo 5y ago
  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?
  - FearlessNebula 5y ago
    What is a fab?
    - JamesCoyne 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plan...
    - wlesieutre 5y ago
      Shorthand for "fabrication" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plan...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Tortoise 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plan...
    - 015a 5y ago
      https://wiki.factorio.com/Processing_unit https://wiki.factorio.com/Processing_unit
hinkley 5y ago
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.
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  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.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    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.
  - hinkley 5y ago
    > 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.
devwastaken 5y ago
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.
- bri3d 5y ago
  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.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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/ https://ardupilot.org/ardupilot/
- userbinator 5y ago
  If by "basic vehicle functionality" you mean enough to run the engine and move the vehicle, there's a lot of other aftermarket ECUs available, and I suppose any engine can be converted to completely non-computerised operation with the addition of a carburetor and points ignition (at the expense of emissions and fuel economy.) You may also enjoy this video on how to shift an electronically controlled transmission manually with no computer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozbWf_QsPrw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozbWf_QsPrw
bluesquared 5y ago
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_ 5y ago
  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_ 5y ago
    Sometimes, automotive components are just better QA'd (validated) regular components.
    - Exmoor 5y ago
      One would assume (or hope) that medical device components are also QA'd to at least the standard of automotive components.
      - jononor 5y ago
        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.
speedgoose 5y ago
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 5y ago
  So few i-Paces are sold that maybe it's no big deal.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    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.
aazaa 5y ago
> 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.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  The cars are maybe already paid for. Then they can't increase the prices until they cleared the pending orders?
  - edoceo 5y ago
    price up on new orders.
    - rightbyte 5y ago
      Nvidia is not really doing that either. I wonder why so many companies are reluctant to increase prices until they meet demand.
      - elliekelly 5y ago
        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 5y ago
  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.
koreanguy 5y ago
European chip production within 3 years, Asia has become expensive and unreliable.
dpedu 5y ago
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.
- snemvalts 5y ago
  Are you seriously suggesting something as complex as this could have been predicted with certainty? Seems like retrospective wisdom.
  - nickik 5y ago
    It isn't. If you are instantly going to reduce orders you try to reduce your own cost and save money. Some automakers said we rather order to much then to little, and those producers have far less problems.
- TillE 5y ago
  "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.
- Leherenn 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26842924
beiller 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
    - calvinmorrison 5y ago
      > I think it's fair to say cars today are packed with more and more full blown cpus since 2010 onwards ISO standardized the CANbus, which is a networked message-based protocol for components talking to eachother. It was first developed by Bosch. Intel started making chips in the early 90s. By the time you get to the Saab 9-5 (1999) you have CANBus running all over the car. The drivers seat? There's 5 motors, a heater, adjusters, buttons,etc. That all talks to the central computer and can be diagnosed by talking to it with a diagnosis device you plug into the OBD2 connector. this is fantastic because the microcontroller can detect the position of the seat for example - run tests and use hall effect sensors to determine what is the problem. This sucks if you don't have a TECHII diagnosis tool. So it's not new - it's in fact very established!
intergalplan 5y ago
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_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 5y ago
  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!
gumby 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      There is a reason penny wise and pound foolish is an enduring saying.
protoman3000 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      How can that be an argument, when we can sign secure transactions using RFID?
      - whereis 5y ago
        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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
throw7 5y ago
subaru is also shutting down some plant(s) temporarily due to chip availability.
mmmBacon 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 ;-)
  - WanderPanda 5y ago
    Maybe it's some state actor piling up bitcoin miners :p
  - WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    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.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Basically everything we use? Many many things have electronics inside that is chips and as demand have moved from services to things there is more things bought, thus more demand. Then add to this some distortions... These are chips in question, not that there is not also demand on high-end. But that is also makers learning that it's better for them to constrain supply. RAM for example was at one point very cheap.
eloff 5y ago
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 5y ago
  You see Tesla's BOM? I bet thet have the very same problem, it's not only the dashboard computer they need chips for.
  - eloff 5y ago
    That is highly possible, I did allude to that.
  - WanderPanda 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      They're also big on doing things themselves if they can't get a supplier at the right price.
- Plasmoid2000ad 5y ago
  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.
UI_at_80x24 5y ago
> 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.
MangoCoffee 5y ago
“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-hits-record-production-deliveries-despite-global-semiconductor-shortage 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
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sircastor 5y ago
  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.)
  - nickik 5y ago
    Well, maybe. Here is the thing, during the peak of the pandemic Elon Musk stated that he sees everybody else reducing orders, they were not gone do that. They said they will continue to go full board ahead and put in orders expecting continuing growth over the next year. The chip makers specifically called out the some OEM for instantly reducing orders and then instantly demand more again. Tesla didn't do that.
- jonfw 5y ago
  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.
jonvk 5y ago
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/S135223101400822X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...
pradn 5y ago
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-anniversary-toyota-in/how-toyota-thrives-when-the-chips-are-down-idUSKBN2B1005 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fukushima-anniversa...
- riskable 5y ago
  If all the manufacturers did what Toyota did that would have exacerbated the chip shortage.
  - kaesar14 5y ago
    Not if the other car companies realized that the lead time being so long meant that cancelling their orders was a horrible idea.
  - oivey 5y ago
    The stockpiled chips would have been made before the shortage, so that doesn’t follow.
  - fgonzag 5y ago
    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.
seomint 5y ago
It's toilet paper all the way down...
dvh 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26891094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26891094
jacques_chester 5y ago
> 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.
- genmud 5y ago
  Well, its the truth. You don't have to be a rocket scientist or have a PHD in supply chains to understand there are second/third order consequences by cancelling significant amounts of your forecasted production and then expecting your suppliers to magically pick up where you left off. Its why you keep production/manufacturing warm rather than do stops (which is what they essentially forced their suppliers to do by cancelling purchases). This is BCP 101 and I give the auto industry no sympathy since most of this pain was entirely self inflicted. They tried to push all the risk to their suppliers, left them holding the bag and had a shocked Pikachu face when they couldn't ramp back up to prior levels.
  - jacques_chester 5y ago
    We're talking about different things. A company running to optimise EOQ and favouring long production runs with few changeovers would be just as screwed by misunderstanding lead times of critical components. JIT doesn't excuse you from supply chain shocks but neither does Lost Magical Process Of The Wonderful Times Before JIT.
reactspa 5y ago
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.
Zenst 5y ago
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-driving-cars-check-out-the-chips-2016-08-26 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.
pbreit 5y ago
I don't understand how cars, which sell in relatively low quantities and use relatively unsophisticated chips, would be delayed by chip shortages.
- FartyMcFarter 5y ago
  Cars have a lot of parts with chips in them.
Kye 5y ago
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?
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  Even if you could technically meet the legal requirements (which I'm pretty sure you couldn't), it'd be impossible to mass manufacture and completely undesirable to consumers. Imagine having to change out the paper rolls/ink in your analog EDR every couple hours, while making sure the battery doesn't explode every time you charge or discharge it. The dashboard alone would be a sight to behold. Honestly, it'd be fun to see how far you could get. Backup fiberscopes vs cameras?
kolbe 5y ago
Pardon my elementary understanding of economics, but I own a lot of Taiwan Semiconductor stock, and I would have thought the answer would be for them to raise their prices until supply meets demand, and that would probably not result in luxury cars being priced out. Also would help my TSM stock quit languishing as it has been doing for a while now.
hda2 5y ago
I hope countries learn from this mess and start working to build up their local manufacturing capacity, even if only to cover their own needs when global disruptions like this hit. It doesn't have to be cutting edge or competitive cost-wise. Even late 90s era tech would do. ICs, like electricity, are indispensable to modern life. They're availability must be secured and protected in the same way.
foobar1962 5y ago
There is an Aussie expression “saving it for Ron” where Ron is an abbreviation for “later on”. It sounds like Toyota is placing two orders: one for now, and one for Ron.
deevolution 5y ago
I wish the chip foundries published their production queue to the general public... that would be some fascinating data to go thru
ArkanExplorer 5y ago
How much of our collective chip-manufacturing capacity is being devoted to Crypto mining? (a useless and environmentally destructive activity) Could Land Rover petition the UK Government to ban the exchange of Proof of Work coins in the UK in order to alleviate this chip shortage? Mining activity is a function of the price of the coin, and even bans from minor economies like Turkey have been enough to decrease prices.
- ric2b 5y ago
  So you want to ban it without even knowing how much impact it has? My guess is not much, as usual.
AtomicOrbital 5y ago
Doing computation in hardware is lightening fast and highly desirable on mobile devices however this chip shortage for vehicles would get resolved if the computation on those chips was shifted into software and executed on commodity x64 cpu hardware ... possibly expedited if the computation intended to get run on these hard to obtain chips already has a software level simulation solution ... would be interested in learning of any show stoppers to this proposed solution ... turnaround time to go this route would be worth it especially since it eliminates such a chip shortage in the future ... is it that much simpler to implement computation in purpose built hardware than software ?

363 points by jchrisa 5y ago

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.

totalZero 5y ago
Even if you get rid of wifi and USB -- even if you get rid of the radio -- you would still want electronic ignition, fuel injection, antilock brakes, traction control, airbags, onboard diagnostics... the list goes on. It's not realistic nowadays to expect a carmaker to sell vehicles that don't depend upon silicon. Ironically, it's not the complex chips that are the issue. It's the little basic ones that have been around for years. Hall effect sensors and things like that. Perhaps nobody ever thought they could be jolted by abnormal market behavior. Not to mention that prettyuch all the major automakers have laid out a timeline for some or all of their product lines to go electric. Not sure how you would build an electric vehicle without semiconductors.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I believe it is impossible design and to sell a car that does not use these chips in Europe. Probably also other large markets. You can not get sufficient safety and emissions without them.
  - avmich 5y ago
    My whole point is that it is, in fact, possible to have many - practically all important - of those features without complex chips - at best with more simple ones, which don't require latest semiconductor technologies to manufacture. I won't itemize to GP, but at least remember that onboard computer is a relatively recent addition for cars.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      But those are exactly the stuff in question here.
      - avmich 5y ago
        I believe you're wrong. Look at this part - > you would still want electronic ignition, fuel injection, antilock brakes, traction control, airbags, onboard diagnostics... the list goes on. Fuel injection is quite important; I drove a car with carburetor, but fuel injection was winning even before onboard computers. However you can have one with hardly any electronics; a rather small and simple analog circuit can work. Electronic ignition begs question: what's that electronic in that? Electrical spark was used in cars, I guess, from the invention of internal combustion engines; but it's not electronic. Timing of the ignition? Cars can and were built without that; even if exists, it's something which sounds rather similar to fuel injection issue. Antilock braking was invented and used as a mechanical system. Same with airbags. Traction control at least evolved from mechanical systems. Onboard diagnostics is nice, but periodical checkups served people well for a long time. In other words, we can have a working car with necessary functions made possible either completely without electronics, or with analog electronics. In the worst case we might use small-scale integrated circuits - and that is already for functions which weren't that popular less than a generation ago. My point, which I believe was misunderstood, is that it looks like a mistake to design a modern car in such a way that it can't be produced without relying on several exclusive manufacturers of high-quality semiconductors, while those semiconductors aren't critical for basic functions of the car. Those custom chips can't even be replaced with alternatives! Make at least an extension module, which would provide all those relatively recent features. I don't understand that it worth stopping car production in case those non-essential - even if quite convenient - functions can't be supplied at the same time as basic necessities.
    - lostapathy 5y ago
      Cars have had "onboard computers" for decades, they just don't have a user interface that resembles the screen on your desk.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pmichaud 5y ago

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?

kalleboo 5y ago
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?
- FearlessNebula 5y ago
  What is a fab?
  - JamesCoyne 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plan...
  - wlesieutre 5y ago
    Shorthand for "fabrication" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plan...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Tortoise 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plan...
  - 015a 5y ago
    https://wiki.factorio.com/Processing_unit https://wiki.factorio.com/Processing_unit

hinkley 5y ago

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.

wlesieutre 5y ago
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.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  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.
- hinkley 5y ago
  > 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.

devwastaken 5y ago

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.

bri3d 5y ago
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.
rightbyte 5y ago
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 5y ago
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/ https://ardupilot.org/ardupilot/
userbinator 5y ago
If by "basic vehicle functionality" you mean enough to run the engine and move the vehicle, there's a lot of other aftermarket ECUs available, and I suppose any engine can be converted to completely non-computerised operation with the addition of a carburetor and points ignition (at the expense of emissions and fuel economy.) You may also enjoy this video on how to shift an electronically controlled transmission manually with no computer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozbWf_QsPrw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozbWf_QsPrw

bluesquared 5y ago

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_ 5y ago
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_ 5y ago
  Sometimes, automotive components are just better QA'd (validated) regular components.
  - Exmoor 5y ago
    One would assume (or hope) that medical device components are also QA'd to at least the standard of automotive components.
    - jononor 5y ago
      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.

speedgoose 5y ago

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 5y ago
So few i-Paces are sold that maybe it's no big deal.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  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.

aazaa 5y ago

> 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.

rightbyte 5y ago
The cars are maybe already paid for. Then they can't increase the prices until they cleared the pending orders?
- edoceo 5y ago
  price up on new orders.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Nvidia is not really doing that either. I wonder why so many companies are reluctant to increase prices until they meet demand.
    - elliekelly 5y ago
      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 5y ago
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.

koreanguy 5y ago

European chip production within 3 years, Asia has become expensive and unreliable.

dpedu 5y ago

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.

snemvalts 5y ago
Are you seriously suggesting something as complex as this could have been predicted with certainty? Seems like retrospective wisdom.
- nickik 5y ago
  It isn't. If you are instantly going to reduce orders you try to reduce your own cost and save money. Some automakers said we rather order to much then to little, and those producers have far less problems.
TillE 5y ago
"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.
Leherenn 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26842924

beiller 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - calvinmorrison 5y ago
    > I think it's fair to say cars today are packed with more and more full blown cpus since 2010 onwards ISO standardized the CANbus, which is a networked message-based protocol for components talking to eachother. It was first developed by Bosch. Intel started making chips in the early 90s. By the time you get to the Saab 9-5 (1999) you have CANBus running all over the car. The drivers seat? There's 5 motors, a heater, adjusters, buttons,etc. That all talks to the central computer and can be diagnosed by talking to it with a diagnosis device you plug into the OBD2 connector. this is fantastic because the microcontroller can detect the position of the seat for example - run tests and use hall effect sensors to determine what is the problem. This sucks if you don't have a TECHII diagnosis tool. So it's not new - it's in fact very established!

intergalplan 5y ago

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_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 5y ago
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!

gumby 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    There is a reason penny wise and pound foolish is an enduring saying.

protoman3000 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    How can that be an argument, when we can sign secure transactions using RFID?
    - whereis 5y ago
      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 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.

throw7 5y ago

subaru is also shutting down some plant(s) temporarily due to chip availability.

mmmBacon 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 ;-)
- WanderPanda 5y ago
  Maybe it's some state actor piling up bitcoin miners :p
- WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Basically everything we use? Many many things have electronics inside that is chips and as demand have moved from services to things there is more things bought, thus more demand. Then add to this some distortions... These are chips in question, not that there is not also demand on high-end. But that is also makers learning that it's better for them to constrain supply. RAM for example was at one point very cheap.

eloff 5y ago

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 5y ago
You see Tesla's BOM? I bet thet have the very same problem, it's not only the dashboard computer they need chips for.
- eloff 5y ago
  That is highly possible, I did allude to that.
- WanderPanda 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    They're also big on doing things themselves if they can't get a supplier at the right price.
Plasmoid2000ad 5y ago
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.

UI_at_80x24 5y ago

> 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.

MangoCoffee 5y ago

“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-hits-record-production-deliveries-despite-global-semiconductor-shortage 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

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sircastor 5y ago
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.)
- nickik 5y ago
  Well, maybe. Here is the thing, during the peak of the pandemic Elon Musk stated that he sees everybody else reducing orders, they were not gone do that. They said they will continue to go full board ahead and put in orders expecting continuing growth over the next year. The chip makers specifically called out the some OEM for instantly reducing orders and then instantly demand more again. Tesla didn't do that.
jonfw 5y ago
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.

jonvk 5y ago

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/S135223101400822X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...

pradn 5y ago

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-anniversary-toyota-in/how-toyota-thrives-when-the-chips-are-down-idUSKBN2B1005 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fukushima-anniversa...

riskable 5y ago
If all the manufacturers did what Toyota did that would have exacerbated the chip shortage.
- kaesar14 5y ago
  Not if the other car companies realized that the lead time being so long meant that cancelling their orders was a horrible idea.
- oivey 5y ago
  The stockpiled chips would have been made before the shortage, so that doesn’t follow.
- fgonzag 5y ago
  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.

seomint 5y ago

It's toilet paper all the way down...

dvh 5y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26891094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26891094

jacques_chester 5y ago

> 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.

genmud 5y ago
Well, its the truth. You don't have to be a rocket scientist or have a PHD in supply chains to understand there are second/third order consequences by cancelling significant amounts of your forecasted production and then expecting your suppliers to magically pick up where you left off. Its why you keep production/manufacturing warm rather than do stops (which is what they essentially forced their suppliers to do by cancelling purchases). This is BCP 101 and I give the auto industry no sympathy since most of this pain was entirely self inflicted. They tried to push all the risk to their suppliers, left them holding the bag and had a shocked Pikachu face when they couldn't ramp back up to prior levels.
- jacques_chester 5y ago
  We're talking about different things. A company running to optimise EOQ and favouring long production runs with few changeovers would be just as screwed by misunderstanding lead times of critical components. JIT doesn't excuse you from supply chain shocks but neither does Lost Magical Process Of The Wonderful Times Before JIT.

reactspa 5y ago

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.

Zenst 5y ago

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-driving-cars-check-out-the-chips-2016-08-26 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.

pbreit 5y ago

I don't understand how cars, which sell in relatively low quantities and use relatively unsophisticated chips, would be delayed by chip shortages.

FartyMcFarter 5y ago
Cars have a lot of parts with chips in them.

Kye 5y ago

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?

AlotOfReading 5y ago
Even if you could technically meet the legal requirements (which I'm pretty sure you couldn't), it'd be impossible to mass manufacture and completely undesirable to consumers. Imagine having to change out the paper rolls/ink in your analog EDR every couple hours, while making sure the battery doesn't explode every time you charge or discharge it. The dashboard alone would be a sight to behold. Honestly, it'd be fun to see how far you could get. Backup fiberscopes vs cameras?

kolbe 5y ago

Pardon my elementary understanding of economics, but I own a lot of Taiwan Semiconductor stock, and I would have thought the answer would be for them to raise their prices until supply meets demand, and that would probably not result in luxury cars being priced out. Also would help my TSM stock quit languishing as it has been doing for a while now.

hda2 5y ago

I hope countries learn from this mess and start working to build up their local manufacturing capacity, even if only to cover their own needs when global disruptions like this hit. It doesn't have to be cutting edge or competitive cost-wise. Even late 90s era tech would do. ICs, like electricity, are indispensable to modern life. They're availability must be secured and protected in the same way.

foobar1962 5y ago

There is an Aussie expression “saving it for Ron” where Ron is an abbreviation for “later on”. It sounds like Toyota is placing two orders: one for now, and one for Ron.

deevolution 5y ago

I wish the chip foundries published their production queue to the general public... that would be some fascinating data to go thru

ArkanExplorer 5y ago

How much of our collective chip-manufacturing capacity is being devoted to Crypto mining? (a useless and environmentally destructive activity) Could Land Rover petition the UK Government to ban the exchange of Proof of Work coins in the UK in order to alleviate this chip shortage? Mining activity is a function of the price of the coin, and even bans from minor economies like Turkey have been enough to decrease prices.

ric2b 5y ago
So you want to ban it without even knowing how much impact it has? My guess is not much, as usual.

AtomicOrbital 5y ago

Doing computation in hardware is lightening fast and highly desirable on mobile devices however this chip shortage for vehicles would get resolved if the computation on those chips was shifted into software and executed on commodity x64 cpu hardware ... possibly expedited if the computation intended to get run on these hard to obtain chips already has a software level simulation solution ... would be interested in learning of any show stoppers to this proposed solution ... turnaround time to go this route would be worth it especially since it eliminates such a chip shortage in the future ... is it that much simpler to implement computation in purpose built hardware than software ?