12 ms·

Disclaimer up front: I work for GM. I don't work on chips or components for my day job. What follows is solely my own opinion. Some things to emphasize: OEMs

by csours 5y ago

Disclaimer up front: I work for GM. I don't work on chips or components for my day job. What follows is solely my own opinion. Some things to emphasize: OEMs (GM, Ford, Toyota, VW, etc) do not design components, and they do not want to. They design specifications for components, and then get suppliers to bid. This is great for efficiency in established ecosystems, not great for agility. To my knowledge, GM did not cancel any chip orders, because GM itself had no chip orders (this is oversimplified). The suppliers cancelled chip orders. For a 1st tier supplier to move to a different process/chip would also be difficult, because they do the same thing the OEM does - supply a specification, and get 2nd/3rd tier suppliers to bid on it. A wholesale migration to a modern architecture is risky and costly. Smaller process/feature size on a wafer is believed to be less resilient, for example to heat and vibration. The risk to large automakers is that something goes wrong and they have to do a recall. The risk to up and comers (Tesla) is failure to grow. Also, Tesla has a small product line and absolute loads of cash. If you were going to design a new car electrical architecture from scratch today, you would have something like a 40-60V system with a centralized controller (or pair of controllers in a safety redundant configuration). Even with a largely cleansheet design, Tesla uses 12V because of the sheer ubiquity of 12V components.

cainxinth 5y ago
> A wholesale migration to a modern architecture is risky and costly. I have no doubt that your company and all the other big automakers are running the numbers and trying to weigh those risks and costs with the risks and costs of not updating. Given that the chipmakers and supply chain experts are not making rosy predictions for things to drastically improve in the next 12 months or longer, I wonder if the balance is shifting towards taking action.
- csours 5y ago
  > "I wonder if the balance is shifting towards taking action." I can't find a public source, but some actions are being taken. Bear in mind that any major shifts would happen in a new product, that is, something 5-7 years out.
  - mwint 5y ago
    Fundamentally, what is it that prevents the established auto makers from making changes mid lifecycle? Seems like Tesla keeps pulling it off; why can’t GM? Is it that the component specification+acquisition cycle you describe is optimized to take as long as the development cycle of a new car?
    - syntaxing 5y ago
      Disclaimer: I work and worked for subsidiaries of big automakers but this opinion is of my own. I would guess it’s a mixture of culture, cost, and scale. Culture wise, Tesla is extremely vertically integrated so that gives them a lot more breathing room. Cost wise, Tesla pretty much still sells car at a loss and relies heavily on carbon offset subsidies for income. When your revenue is established, trying to change margin or anything is probably much more difficult. Lastly, it’s scale, while Tesla is trying to catch up, the throughput of the major automakers is absolutely mind defying. The whole system is an oil machined that any sort of downtime is detrimental and difficult once the line is established. To put into perspective, Tesla “monumental” Q2 quarter shipped 200K cars or so. GM in the US only sold 200K per month.
      - panick21 5y ago
        > Cost wise, Tesla pretty much still sells car at a loss and relies heavily on carbon offset subsidies for income. I'm sorry but that is just straight up complete nonsense. Like seriously, you are directly disagreeing with public financial statements. We know exactly how much margin Tesla has, with and without carbon offset. The simple fact is, Tesla has leading automotive margins even when you exclude any carbon credits.
        mcguire 5y ago
        Hmm. I'm not sure I'd go strongly either way. According to reports (https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/tesla-profitability/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/tesla-profitability...) Tesla received $1600M in regulatory credits and had a net income of $721M. If you look at the 10K (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021004599/tsla-10k_20201231.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021...), Tesla received $27,236M in automotive revenues (which includes sales of regulatory credits, thanks Elon). The corresponding cost of sales is $20,259M giving gross profit of $6,977M and gross margin of 26%. But after that, you have operating expenses ($4,636M) (blah, blah, interest, taxes, other, blah) and a final net income of $721M.
- petre 5y ago
  I guess this could also catalyze the switch to EVs as they have quite different requirements.
raverbashing 5y ago
Yeah, I remember some talk about moving car buses to 24V or maybe even 48V but that didn't seem to have gained ground.
api 5y ago
> OEMs (GM, Ford, Toyota, VW, etc) do not design components, and they do not want to. They design specifications for components, and then get suppliers to bid. This is great for efficiency in established ecosystems, not great for agility. There are some great stories about SpaceX trying to source components this way and then finally ending up having to DIY. What they found was that modern CAD and rapid prototyping made it easier than it used to be. Car companies would probably find the same thing, and have the luxury of doing it piecemeal at their own pace by gradually insourcing components in the order of necessity or benefit. The “do not want to” part probably points to these companies being run by Ivy League MBAs educated in the 1990s and 2000s when this was conventional wisdom. The world is changing.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  I wish company leadership knew that conventional wisdom is time-bound and has an expiration date. Of course, actually trying to figure out if the conventional wisdom still holds involves risking time and money on R&D. And, the larger the institution the more risk averse the leadership will be. It’s a real shame that the companies you would think have the most ability to absorb risk are the most averse towards taking them.
  - roughly 5y ago
    It’s not just science that advances one funeral at a time.
- weinzierl 5y ago
  I worked in aerospace for six years before changing into automotive. The difference could not be bigger. In aerospace cost didn't matter a lot and many things are custom built, even down to custom alloys and materials. Also the amount of planning, numerical analysis, simulation, preparation and especially testing is insane. Project timelines are sometimes more than a decade. In automotive 'cost down' is the mantra and is often enough measured in fractions of cents. Almost nothing is customized and parts reused for different product lines whenever possible.
snthd 5y ago
>40-60V system What makes that voltage a better trade off?
- orthoxerox 5y ago
  Lower amperage.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  I'm not the OP nor an electrical engineer, but I believe that you can get higher DC power with less resistance losses using higher voltage and lower amperage. Additionally, this allows the use of thinner wire (lighter, cheaper, easier to package in tight locations).
- optimiz3 5y ago
  Thinner wires can be used, which significantly reduces weight, complexity, and cost.
- zh3 5y ago
  Power is volts x amps. The more amps, the thicker the wires need to be (volts are irrelvant). So to minise weight/wire size, use the highest voltage possible (and thus the lowest current). Losses are purely related to current (I^2*R) so the incentive is to squeezee the current (so needing to increases the voltage). There's a reason the high-voltage overheads are 432 kilovolts (or more); 10 amps at 432kV = 4.3MW (MegaWatts) while 10amps from a stock AC outlet is 1.2KW (KiloWatts). The wire thickness required for both is the same (though the HV wires need to be better insulated, out of the way of crazy fools etc). So a 60V system for a car carries 1/5 the current of a 12v system, and the wires can have 1/5 the cross-sectional area. (yes, I know there are caveats when it comes to AC).
  - a9h74j 5y ago
    Recent TIL: Wire guage follows a 10log10 of ohms per 1000ft, relative to 0.1 ohms per 1000ft: 0ga .. 0.1 ohms per 1000 ft 10ga .. 1.0 ohms per 1000 ft 20ga .. 10 ohms per 1000 ft 30ga .. 100 ohms per 1000 ft http://www.interfacebus.com/AWG-table-of-different-wire-gauge-resistance.html http://www.interfacebus.com/AWG-table-of-different-wire-gaug...
sandGorgon 5y ago
>If you were going to design a new car electrical architecture from scratch today, you would have something like a 40-60V system with a centralized controller (or pair of controllers in a safety redundant configuration). Actually this point is something im curious about - it seems to be redundant to have a 3X redundant processor ..probably placed in different places on the car body for safety. Would that not be superior to current architecture..while being able to tap into the most modern chip architecture of the day ? I'm not a car engineer and dont understand CANBUS, etc. But just wondering if this is indeed possible.
- csours 5y ago
  Do not take any of this as a particular endorsement of a safety system. Airplanes need 3x redundancy on safety critical components, because they carry a lot of people and are not fail safe when they are in the air. Cars can generally stop safely. As far as changing architectures - think about safety critical loops and real time computing. Some processes should never be pre-empted.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    >Cars can generally stop safely. "Brake-by-wire is used in all common hybrid and electric vehicles produced since 1998 including all Toyota, Ford, and General Motors Electric and hybrid models." "Three main types of redundancy usually exist in a brake-by-wire system: Redundant sensors in safety critical components such as the brake pedal. Redundant copies of some signals that are of particular safety importance such as displacement and force measurements of the brake pedal copied by multiple processors in the pedal interface unit. Redundant hardware to perform important processing tasks such as multiple processors for the ECU" "The highest potential risk for brake system failure has proven to be the Brake Control System software. Recurring failures have occurred in over 200 cases documented in NTSB documents. Because each manufacturer guards the confidentiality of their system design and software, there is no independent validation of the systems. As of 2016 the NTSB has not directly investigated passenger car and light truck brake-by-wire vehicle accidents, and the manufacturers have taken the position that their vehicles are completely safe, and that all reported accidents are the result of "driver error"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-by-wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-by-wire
hinkley 5y ago
The suppliers are running in pretty thin margins aren’t they? Did they really have any choice but to cancel those orders or potentially go bankrupt? If you sit on someone’s shoulders and forget that they’re doing most of the work, you can be shocked all you want when they collapse out from under you but nobody on the ground is going to have any sympathy at all for you. I’ve worked for software subcontractors and it’s always frustrating when the customer is so excited about all the things we’re going to accomplish together, all the plans that hinge on our mutual success, and isn’t it so wonderful that they’re getting such a great deal on it too? Meanwhile we’re slowly going broke because we can’t make money on that sweetheart deal loaded with scope creep not spelled out properly in the contracts. Good luck with those plans when we go under.
- MichaelZuo 5y ago
  ‘ sweetheart deal loaded with scope creep not spelled out properly in the contracts’ That sounds more like a problem to take up with your lawyers?
  - blcArmadillo 5y ago
    If you don't allow for scope creep you won't get any contracts. What I've seen in the industry is most companies will under bid hoping to make it up in change request fees. The successful companies are the ones who manage the OEM such that they keep them happy while maximizing change requests. It's a fine line to walk.
- syshum 5y ago
  Automotive is notorious in MFG for being one of the WORST industries to be a supplier in (at least for US Based Suppliers). Low Margins, and unrealistic demands by the big brands.
- novok 5y ago
  I don't think money is a problem in this specific case. Because of car shortage conditions they can afford to add a few hundred dollars to the MSRP and pay more for non-cutting edge chips and still come out fine.
syshum 5y ago
>>>To my knowledge, GM did not cancel any chip orders, because GM itself had no chip orders (this is oversimplified). Come on, Really? So GM cancelled the orders for all the tings that the chips go in, and you want to spin that as "well technically GM did not cancel the chips" That is bullshit.... The supply chain does not work like that, if GM cancels an order for 100,000 ECM's the supplier for the ECM is going to cancel their order for 100,000 chips for them to make the ECM for GM, it is unrealitic to believe anything else would happen.
baybal2 5y ago
> If you were going to design a new car electrical architecture from scratch today, you would have something like a 40-60V system with a centralized controller (or pair of controllers in a safety redundant configuration). Aircrafts historically been using high frequency AC, on both sides of the iron curtain (as both sides were copying each other.) Old analog instruments actually benefited from AC availability. And when SMPS were big, and heavy, transformers were much more reliable, and smaller (and they are still are, depending on the frequency) 3 phase power was also giving some interesting cost cutting benefits at the time
Gibbon1 5y ago
I'm not in the car industry. But I spec mixed analog/digital parts and so see a lot of ads and press releases for automotive parts. I'm seeing increasing offerings of two pair Power over Ethernet controllers, cables, and connectors. That makes me think that as companies retire legacy gas/diesel products they'll probably switch to an automotive PoE standard. Allows you to to power the window lift regulator, door locks, and read the switches off a single 20 gauge cable. Weld a fully assembled door assembly to the body and than plug in a single cable. What's not to like?

by csours 5y ago

cainxinth 5y ago

> A wholesale migration to a modern architecture is risky and costly. I have no doubt that your company and all the other big automakers are running the numbers and trying to weigh those risks and costs with the risks and costs of not updating. Given that the chipmakers and supply chain experts are not making rosy predictions for things to drastically improve in the next 12 months or longer, I wonder if the balance is shifting towards taking action.

csours 5y ago
> "I wonder if the balance is shifting towards taking action." I can't find a public source, but some actions are being taken. Bear in mind that any major shifts would happen in a new product, that is, something 5-7 years out.
- mwint 5y ago
  Fundamentally, what is it that prevents the established auto makers from making changes mid lifecycle? Seems like Tesla keeps pulling it off; why can’t GM? Is it that the component specification+acquisition cycle you describe is optimized to take as long as the development cycle of a new car?
  - syntaxing 5y ago
    Disclaimer: I work and worked for subsidiaries of big automakers but this opinion is of my own. I would guess it’s a mixture of culture, cost, and scale. Culture wise, Tesla is extremely vertically integrated so that gives them a lot more breathing room. Cost wise, Tesla pretty much still sells car at a loss and relies heavily on carbon offset subsidies for income. When your revenue is established, trying to change margin or anything is probably much more difficult. Lastly, it’s scale, while Tesla is trying to catch up, the throughput of the major automakers is absolutely mind defying. The whole system is an oil machined that any sort of downtime is detrimental and difficult once the line is established. To put into perspective, Tesla “monumental” Q2 quarter shipped 200K cars or so. GM in the US only sold 200K per month.
    - panick21 5y ago
      > Cost wise, Tesla pretty much still sells car at a loss and relies heavily on carbon offset subsidies for income. I'm sorry but that is just straight up complete nonsense. Like seriously, you are directly disagreeing with public financial statements. We know exactly how much margin Tesla has, with and without carbon offset. The simple fact is, Tesla has leading automotive margins even when you exclude any carbon credits.
      - mcguire 5y ago
        Hmm. I'm not sure I'd go strongly either way. According to reports (https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/tesla-profitability/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/tesla-profitability...) Tesla received $1600M in regulatory credits and had a net income of $721M. If you look at the 10K (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021004599/tsla-10k_20201231.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021...), Tesla received $27,236M in automotive revenues (which includes sales of regulatory credits, thanks Elon). The corresponding cost of sales is $20,259M giving gross profit of $6,977M and gross margin of 26%. But after that, you have operating expenses ($4,636M) (blah, blah, interest, taxes, other, blah) and a final net income of $721M.
petre 5y ago
I guess this could also catalyze the switch to EVs as they have quite different requirements.

raverbashing 5y ago

Yeah, I remember some talk about moving car buses to 24V or maybe even 48V but that didn't seem to have gained ground.

api 5y ago

> OEMs (GM, Ford, Toyota, VW, etc) do not design components, and they do not want to. They design specifications for components, and then get suppliers to bid. This is great for efficiency in established ecosystems, not great for agility. There are some great stories about SpaceX trying to source components this way and then finally ending up having to DIY. What they found was that modern CAD and rapid prototyping made it easier than it used to be. Car companies would probably find the same thing, and have the luxury of doing it piecemeal at their own pace by gradually insourcing components in the order of necessity or benefit. The “do not want to” part probably points to these companies being run by Ivy League MBAs educated in the 1990s and 2000s when this was conventional wisdom. The world is changing.

BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
I wish company leadership knew that conventional wisdom is time-bound and has an expiration date. Of course, actually trying to figure out if the conventional wisdom still holds involves risking time and money on R&D. And, the larger the institution the more risk averse the leadership will be. It’s a real shame that the companies you would think have the most ability to absorb risk are the most averse towards taking them.
- roughly 5y ago
  It’s not just science that advances one funeral at a time.
weinzierl 5y ago
I worked in aerospace for six years before changing into automotive. The difference could not be bigger. In aerospace cost didn't matter a lot and many things are custom built, even down to custom alloys and materials. Also the amount of planning, numerical analysis, simulation, preparation and especially testing is insane. Project timelines are sometimes more than a decade. In automotive 'cost down' is the mantra and is often enough measured in fractions of cents. Almost nothing is customized and parts reused for different product lines whenever possible.

snthd 5y ago

>40-60V system What makes that voltage a better trade off?

orthoxerox 5y ago
Lower amperage.
dotancohen 5y ago
I'm not the OP nor an electrical engineer, but I believe that you can get higher DC power with less resistance losses using higher voltage and lower amperage. Additionally, this allows the use of thinner wire (lighter, cheaper, easier to package in tight locations).
optimiz3 5y ago
Thinner wires can be used, which significantly reduces weight, complexity, and cost.
zh3 5y ago
Power is volts x amps. The more amps, the thicker the wires need to be (volts are irrelvant). So to minise weight/wire size, use the highest voltage possible (and thus the lowest current). Losses are purely related to current (I^2*R) so the incentive is to squeezee the current (so needing to increases the voltage). There's a reason the high-voltage overheads are 432 kilovolts (or more); 10 amps at 432kV = 4.3MW (MegaWatts) while 10amps from a stock AC outlet is 1.2KW (KiloWatts). The wire thickness required for both is the same (though the HV wires need to be better insulated, out of the way of crazy fools etc). So a 60V system for a car carries 1/5 the current of a 12v system, and the wires can have 1/5 the cross-sectional area. (yes, I know there are caveats when it comes to AC).
- a9h74j 5y ago
  Recent TIL: Wire guage follows a 10log10 of ohms per 1000ft, relative to 0.1 ohms per 1000ft: 0ga .. 0.1 ohms per 1000 ft 10ga .. 1.0 ohms per 1000 ft 20ga .. 10 ohms per 1000 ft 30ga .. 100 ohms per 1000 ft http://www.interfacebus.com/AWG-table-of-different-wire-gauge-resistance.html http://www.interfacebus.com/AWG-table-of-different-wire-gaug...

sandGorgon 5y ago

>If you were going to design a new car electrical architecture from scratch today, you would have something like a 40-60V system with a centralized controller (or pair of controllers in a safety redundant configuration). Actually this point is something im curious about - it seems to be redundant to have a 3X redundant processor ..probably placed in different places on the car body for safety. Would that not be superior to current architecture..while being able to tap into the most modern chip architecture of the day ? I'm not a car engineer and dont understand CANBUS, etc. But just wondering if this is indeed possible.

csours 5y ago
Do not take any of this as a particular endorsement of a safety system. Airplanes need 3x redundancy on safety critical components, because they carry a lot of people and are not fail safe when they are in the air. Cars can generally stop safely. As far as changing architectures - think about safety critical loops and real time computing. Some processes should never be pre-empted.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >Cars can generally stop safely. "Brake-by-wire is used in all common hybrid and electric vehicles produced since 1998 including all Toyota, Ford, and General Motors Electric and hybrid models." "Three main types of redundancy usually exist in a brake-by-wire system: Redundant sensors in safety critical components such as the brake pedal. Redundant copies of some signals that are of particular safety importance such as displacement and force measurements of the brake pedal copied by multiple processors in the pedal interface unit. Redundant hardware to perform important processing tasks such as multiple processors for the ECU" "The highest potential risk for brake system failure has proven to be the Brake Control System software. Recurring failures have occurred in over 200 cases documented in NTSB documents. Because each manufacturer guards the confidentiality of their system design and software, there is no independent validation of the systems. As of 2016 the NTSB has not directly investigated passenger car and light truck brake-by-wire vehicle accidents, and the manufacturers have taken the position that their vehicles are completely safe, and that all reported accidents are the result of "driver error"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-by-wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-by-wire

hinkley 5y ago

The suppliers are running in pretty thin margins aren’t they? Did they really have any choice but to cancel those orders or potentially go bankrupt? If you sit on someone’s shoulders and forget that they’re doing most of the work, you can be shocked all you want when they collapse out from under you but nobody on the ground is going to have any sympathy at all for you. I’ve worked for software subcontractors and it’s always frustrating when the customer is so excited about all the things we’re going to accomplish together, all the plans that hinge on our mutual success, and isn’t it so wonderful that they’re getting such a great deal on it too? Meanwhile we’re slowly going broke because we can’t make money on that sweetheart deal loaded with scope creep not spelled out properly in the contracts. Good luck with those plans when we go under.

MichaelZuo 5y ago
‘ sweetheart deal loaded with scope creep not spelled out properly in the contracts’ That sounds more like a problem to take up with your lawyers?
- blcArmadillo 5y ago
  If you don't allow for scope creep you won't get any contracts. What I've seen in the industry is most companies will under bid hoping to make it up in change request fees. The successful companies are the ones who manage the OEM such that they keep them happy while maximizing change requests. It's a fine line to walk.
syshum 5y ago
Automotive is notorious in MFG for being one of the WORST industries to be a supplier in (at least for US Based Suppliers). Low Margins, and unrealistic demands by the big brands.
novok 5y ago
I don't think money is a problem in this specific case. Because of car shortage conditions they can afford to add a few hundred dollars to the MSRP and pay more for non-cutting edge chips and still come out fine.

syshum 5y ago

>>>To my knowledge, GM did not cancel any chip orders, because GM itself had no chip orders (this is oversimplified). Come on, Really? So GM cancelled the orders for all the tings that the chips go in, and you want to spin that as "well technically GM did not cancel the chips" That is bullshit.... The supply chain does not work like that, if GM cancels an order for 100,000 ECM's the supplier for the ECM is going to cancel their order for 100,000 chips for them to make the ECM for GM, it is unrealitic to believe anything else would happen.

baybal2 5y ago

> If you were going to design a new car electrical architecture from scratch today, you would have something like a 40-60V system with a centralized controller (or pair of controllers in a safety redundant configuration). Aircrafts historically been using high frequency AC, on both sides of the iron curtain (as both sides were copying each other.) Old analog instruments actually benefited from AC availability. And when SMPS were big, and heavy, transformers were much more reliable, and smaller (and they are still are, depending on the frequency) 3 phase power was also giving some interesting cost cutting benefits at the time

Gibbon1 5y ago

I'm not in the car industry. But I spec mixed analog/digital parts and so see a lot of ads and press releases for automotive parts. I'm seeing increasing offerings of two pair Power over Ethernet controllers, cables, and connectors. That makes me think that as companies retire legacy gas/diesel products they'll probably switch to an automotive PoE standard. Allows you to to power the window lift regulator, door locks, and read the switches off a single 20 gauge cable. Weld a fully assembled door assembly to the body and than plug in a single cable. What's not to like?