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Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022
- whiteboardr 5y ago@kliment summarized the why pretty well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26931498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26931498 Curious if this is true for all manufacturers.
- intricatedetail 5y agoWhat would cause pretty much all STM32 microcontrollers to be not available and any amount that shows up disappears within minutes? Then you can buy pretty much any part from China without issue?
- baybal2 5y agoChinese people stopped hoarding luxury apartments, and started hoarding microchips — a popular explanation
- a9h74j 5y ago> a popular explanation When I was a kid, the urban legend question was: What if all of the Chinese jumped off a platform at the same time? Would it shake the other side of the world?
- MetallicCloud 5y agoOne of my favourite what ifs https://what-if.xkcd.com/8/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/8/
- a9h74j 5y agoGreat!... So Build Back Better?
- Inviz 5y agoSTM32s from China increased 3 to 5 times in price in last 6 months, biggest jump happened in last 6 weeks. STM32L family is especially hard to buy.
- isoprophlex 5y agoWhat an amazing comment; penetrating insight clearly communicated. Thanks for sharing.
- da_chicken 5y agoThe "religious reasons" he's talking about are "zero inventory" or "JIT inventory" pioneered by Japanese auto makers in the 80s and 90s. By optimizing inventory management and understanding demand for your product, you can ensure you don't have excess inventory on-site (meaning you don't have money invested in product parts you can't sell and have to pay taxes on). It's the system that virtually every manufacturer (auto or otherwise) uses now. It's why major supply chain issues cause catastrophic manufacturing problems.
- j-bos 5y agoMy understanding is that JIT, as performed by Toyota, takes into account the differences in difficulty of sourcing different inventories. If this is true, one would expect that Toyota faced shortages later than other manufacturers. Does anyone have a source proving or disproving this?
- hef19898 5y agoToyota was among the last to be hit. Also, JIT is not having zero inventory. It is about having the right amount of inventory.
- worldsayshi 5y agoPedantic comment: is that not what lean is about? Or is "lean" and jit essentially the same thing?
- hef19898 5y agoJIT, as Kanban, is part of the Toyota Production System. It is also called Lean nowadays, or simply TPS. The basic principles go back to the US defence industry in WW2, on one hand, and some ingenious ideas from the old Toyota company manufacturing looms. I also see some of these ideas, tacted assembly lines for example, as far back the Venetian Arsenal cranking out Galleons and Galleasses in unprecedented numbers in the 16th (?) century.
- 5y ago
- ladyattis 5y agoI know that even SMD transistors got hit hard by the automaker component switch-a-roo. It's not too easy to find RF transistors even for signal amp work like I do for a hobby. It's just a disaster right now.
- lvl100 5y agoThis is not true at all. How many chips do you think the car industry needs for car parts? How many cars do you think they sell in a year? It’s not hard to figure it out. People parroting this narrative have no idea what’s happening behind the scene.
- mendigou 5y agoMost of us affected think it's very true. There are 60-70 million cars sold worldwide each year and many chips of different kinds in each. If you have some deeper insight it'd be great to share it.
- lvl100 5y agoWhat we are seeing is basically hoarding across the board and pandemic-induced manufacturing disruptions. And suppliers are going along with it because they make substantially more profit in this situation. This notion that car manufacturers are responsible for halting the entire world for chips is simply a narrative to hide what’s really happening. Even if car mfgs cut production due to pandemic miscalculations, that’s at best 5-10%. That alone is not enough to shut down factories. And we are more than one full cycle out of the pandemic. We are still talking about a supply chain that was state of the art. If you think they didn’t adjust (to some 10M unit miscalculation) by now, I don’t think you should be writing articles on this topic.
- mendigou 5y agoNothing new here. We are all stockpiling components because we have no idea what the market will look like in the coming months, and that is causing further market distortions. However, one of the largest triggers for this madness was the miscalculation by the car industry that had an effect on a large portion of chip factories. Even the comment linked in the parent acknowledges that it's not all about car manufacturing, it's the ensuing madness (that they caused in large part) that is making it worse. Your comment clashes directly with the reality of multiple car plants closing or slowing down considerably due to the shortage.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y agoAny carmaker whose cars can't sell will be happy to get their suppliers to not supply them with chips. Let's see how the main EV manufacturers will procure their chips in the coming months.
- slownews45 5y agoMan - the magnitude / impact of these chips shortages on autos in particular is crazy. 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.
- baybal2 5y ago200mm tapeouts have briefly became more profitable than leading edge ones on the wave of panic buying. On my side, I lost a lot of firmware devs to poaching by companies migrating between microchip brands, and ready to pay just anything, to the point of me myself being tempted.
- redisman 5y agoHeck, why not? It’s a market economy and we are a commodity. Why resist your price going up?
- baybal2 5y agoIt's an ultimate irony to see that 200mm fabs in the West were closed one after another for "low profitability" just to see them missing out on this money volcano
- Ekaros 5y agoIf those fabs where still around probably profitability would be even lower and there wouldn't be so massive profits. Irony is that we haven't been paying some more, to keep slack in supply.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoMind telling us whether you're hiring? And, mind pointing us to some contacts where your people are going?
- spoonjim 5y agoWouldn’t carmakers instead buy capacity from people making USB chargers etc? I would think the cost of downtime would have them paying any price.
- simfree 5y agoIt takes 1 to 2 quarters for silicon to be manufactured, we are seeing the results of decisions that were finalized in early 2021 with regard to what is available today to buy.
- hristov 5y agoAuto chips are usually a higher grade than consumer. They have to be able to handle wide ranges of temperature and moisture and also handle vibration. There is usually an extensive testing process until a chip gets qualified for auto production. This is especially true for chips used in the drivetrain and/or safety systems. There are some cases where a foundry is already qualified for an auto grade chip and they make a consumer chip in addition to it on the same equipment. They can stop making the consumer chip and devote 100% of their capacity to the auto grade chip. If that is a possibility, I am sure it is already happening. But a lot of foundries that make consumer chips simply aren't qualified to make auto grade chips, so they cannot move production.
- persedes 5y agoIdk 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)
- 88840-8855 5y agoEdit: 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. If opinions are downvoted then I do not need to participate.
- folli 5y agoAny proof that there's a significant inflation ongoing?
- 88840-8855 5y agoCPI in Germany
- puzzlingcaptcha 5y agoWell, since January the US CPI rose by 4.4% and there are still 4 months to go (September data is released in two weeks). The Fed target is ~2%. That's before you get into whether the official number is underestimated (e.g homeowner's equivalent rent, which is a quarter of the CPI basket). Is it significant? Maybe, maybe not.
- oblio 5y agoInflation is growing everywhere. You can't have a crisis and then dump that much money without inflation happening. Besides CPI, the main inflation is actually asset inflation. Look at the huge stock, real estate, etc. price booms since 2020.
- lovich 5y agoThe people not producing goods weren’t doing so out of laziness or some bureaucratic snafu. They weren’t producing goods because there was a pandemic and getting physically near others was dangerous. If you think those furloughed workers shouldn’t have gotten any money sue it would be “good” for the long term system, then might I suggest as a modest proposal that you simply toss them into a meat grinder? Very simple and removes the people spending too much money from the economy
- 5y ago
- caeril 5y agoWhat 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: A simple, basic car, with the ONLY electronic control being for: - Valve timing - Fuel injection - Oxygen and throttle - Emissions 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. 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. I understand the re-engineering is a cost. But when you're simply removing existing features, this should be a fairly negligible one. edit: I wasn't aware any of these luxury features were mandated by governments. Apologies, and disregard.
- kenniskrag 5y agotire pressure sensor, gps and e-call is needed by law.
- paxys 5y agoAnd rear view cameras
- _moof 5y agoAnd I'm not sure what kinds of pressure sensors cars use, but I can tell you the ones I need have been impossible to source for months.
- emidln 5y agoTPMS works by calculating the RPM of the wheel and knowing the tire size and vehicle speed. Most TPMS setups don't know the actual pressure, they infer it.
- lastofthemojito 5y ago
- gklwand 5y ago"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." 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.
- ashtonkem 5y agoBecause even that car would have chips in it, unless if you’re selling it illegally. You cannot make a gasoline engine that meets emissions regulations without sophisticated engine control unit (ECU) systems in it. That and there are a bunch of safety features that require it, like ABS and automatic braking. In the United States it is also illegal to sell a new car without a backup camera, which obviously requires a screen of some sorts near the driver. Beyond that, the reality is that these features you decry are very, very popular. Nobody will make a car exactly the way you want, because that’s not where consumers are.
- wonderwonder 5y agoVery few people would want this, certainly not enough to warrant a production line. The cars you want already exist, just buy a classic car from the 60's. None of the stuff you dislike and if done right a nice looking car. Gas is a bit more though.
- seszett 5y ago> why not build a car without electronics, gps, g4, microphones, voice control, tracking and screens. Because that is exactly what I want. That sounds like what Dacia does.
- intricatedetail 5y agoThere are already bills in the pipeline to require all cars to have GPS in the EU (speed limiters) and more privacy violating stuff. Governments want to know of every aspect of your life, so any privacy conscious device will not be viable.
- xadhominemx 5y ago
- turbinerneiter 5y agoI 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. On the other hand, good for us, any ICE car or car in general that is not produced is good for the environment.
- carlmr 5y agoIt's not like the supply chain managers had much choice in this. For years they would have been fired for keeping too much stock around.
- turbinerneiter 5y agoTrue. Whoever made these choices then. Incompetent management. 100s of workers are losing their jobs because of them.
- carlmr 5y agoWell these hundreds of workers wouldn't have had the job if they hadn't operated efficiently for the preceding 20 years. It's a bet that has probably paid off, even including the current situation.
- tibbydudeza 5y agoThey 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. Nowadays they make rebadged Peugeot/Citroen cars.
- _trampeltier 5y agoOpel Manta .. they made even movies about two movies about it :-)
- overhero 5y agoopel rekord is the real deal, man.
- tibbydudeza 5y agoLotus Carlton.
- tibbydudeza 5y agoCheesy German movies from the 80's.
- chrismeller 5y agoHeh. I was thinking the same thing: “yeah, so what if they do?” Horrible shame, that lack of Opels.
- dpe82 5y agoAre you suggesting the plant closure is due more to waning popularity of their cars rather than availability of parts?
- MrRiddle 5y agoUnpopularity probably affects their negotiating abilities.
- paxys 5y agoOne 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).
- neogodless 5y agoI'm not following your chain of reasoning here. Prices were climbing before the chip shortage, while "technology" (or specifically, features requiring computer chips) has increasingly been an important part of marketing strategy, differentiation and consumer focus in the automotive industry. (Anecdotally, I check reviews for how well they handle things like Android Auto/Apple CarPlay, and in-car software updates.) The pricing could reflect a lot of things, including inflation, growing consumer wealth (or credit), consumers prioritizing automotive due to a variety of reasons including marketing/image, increased time spent commuting, etc. What does this supply chain hiccup have to do with your hypothesis?
- baybal2 5y agoThe aspect of the problem not talked about is that a lot of automotive chips are really, really old. And they are old, because of many certification requirements set partially by the industry, and a few odd governments. In reality, most of them are both less reliable, and harder to work with in comparison to open market parts. The only two things I seen chips with micron scale nodes used in my life were: air conditioner boards, and car parts.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoCars are a really noisy electrical environment. Can you replace that micron-scale chip with a 7 nm chip and have it function reliably for two decades in that environment? I mean, worst case, when you let go of the starter motor, it creates a huge back EMF. Imagine your chip finding its +5 input suddenly 12 volts below ground for a significant fraction of a second. (Now, it shouldn't be that bad any more. That was back in the bad old days, when chips were just starting to be added to cars. Shielding should be a mostly-solved problem these days. But is it solved well enough for your 7 nm chip, or just well enough for the micron-scale chips? It's something you have to really carefully look at before you move to smaller processes.)
- baybal2 5y ago> Cars are a really noisy electrical environment. Can you replace that micron-scale chip with a 7 nm chip and have it function reliably for two decades in that environment? For as long as you talk about digital side, you can. Your smartphone is a way more noisy electrical environment than your car.
- xnyan 5y ago>Your smartphone is a way more noisy electrical environment than your car. Cellphones are are certainly tricky, but in a different way than cars. In my experience with EMF measurement and EMI compliance at Underwriters Labs, cars are uniquely challenging due to the relatively strong EMF generation from the huge number of motors, solenoids, coils other magnetic bits banging around and interacting with each other in hard-to-predict ways.
- kbaker 5y agoOne important part of the chip shortage is the massive amount of price gouging going on. Every IC is being bought up by new 3rd party distributors to scalp to desperate electronics manufacturers. Take a look at this chip we are just now crossing as an example, click on 'Non-authorized stocking distributors': https://octopart.com/tps2052bdgnr-texas+instruments-699312?r=sp https://octopart.com/tps2052bdgnr-texas+instruments-699312?r... 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. 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. 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.
- hutrdvnj 5y agoScalpers are not the problem as they seem, they are like market makers for stock exchanges. They buy low and sell high, always. The factory could tell you that they're currently out of stock for the next few months, but a scalper will never be out of stock, because their prices rises so high that only very few desperate companies would buy. The point is, it's better to have the option to buy something at a high price, than to have no option to buy at all.
- Retric 5y agoThey can only do that by holding onto to supply which makes shortages worse. The same thing happens with ticket scalping at concerts, the difference is it’s more obvious that a sold out concert has empty seats vs supply sitting in a warehouse on the off chance it can be sold at 100x prices.
- abfan1127 5y agothis is false. the supply would be gone at those low prices. Now they can be had for those who want it badly enough.
- aazaa 5y ago> 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. For perspective: > 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. https://fiatgroupworld.com/2021/02/14/stellantis-sold-6-2-million-vehicles-in-2020-dropping-two-positions-in-the-top-10-global-ranking/ https://fiatgroupworld.com/2021/02/14/stellantis-sold-6-2-mi... 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%. That's disastrous hit for any company to withstand. 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.
- timmg 5y ago> 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%. But it's a low margin industry. They can now charge above MSRP. If they aren't stuck paying for parts (or labor) of the units they can't make, they might come out ahead. Fewer units, waaaay more profit per unit.
- megablast 5y agoFinally some good news. Less cars is a global good thing.
- Unklejoe 5y agoPeople will just keep driving their older cars which pollute even more.
- ok123456 5y agoThere haven't been many breakthroughs in the past twenty years in regards to fuel efficiency. They're just gaming the numbers at this point by making the engines have higher and higher compression at the cost of making them less and less reliable. Maybe old cars being dramatically less fuel efficient was true in the 90s when an "old-car" was from the 70s.
- minhazm 5y agoTesla 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. > “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.” https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22595060/tesla-chip-shortage-software-rewriting-ev-processor https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22595060/tesla-chip-short...
- blackguardx 5y agoThey also just completely dropped a feature - radar - because they couldn't get parts for it. I'm not sure other manufacturers would be able to do that either due to internal processes or being able to risk their reputation.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- FartyMcFarter 5y agoIndeed - not many manufacturers could get away with Tesla's strategy of charging money for features that are in Alpha state, to put it charitably (e.g. Autopilot).
- speedgoose 5y agoMany manufacturers had no shame to charge for shitty features in alpha state like the "ping pong" line assist.
- mnholt 5y agoWell they aren't going to "ping pong" themselves into a parked emergency vehicle.
- babypuncher 5y agoI'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. 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.
- cwkoss 5y agoIs there a DIY chip fabrication scene? What is the cutting edge of what hobbyists are doing in their own garages?
- nosianu 5y agoThat was actually a post here on HN just a few weeks ago. Here's one "point of entry" (to find the homepage and similar videos and pages): https://youtu.be/IS5ycm7VfXg https://youtu.be/IS5ycm7VfXg "Upgraded Homemade Silicon Chips"
- cwkoss 5y agoThis is exactly what I was looking for, thanks for sharing!
- sytelus 5y agoWe 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, their suppliers do.
- ilyakrotov 5y agoSeems like the best time to start a mining startup
- jbverschoor 5y agoOr maybe there’s just a lack of demand??