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Carmakers feel chip crisis easing
- Kenji 4y agoWe don't notice any easing in the embedded devices industry. In fact, things are as bad as they ever were right now.
- pdc56 4y agoI'm sure a complete coincidence, but last week I got chips I've been after for over a year (USB 3.2 hub IC)
- waiseristy 4y agoNo easing here either (IoT), but things are at least not getting worse
- contingencies 4y agoWe design embedded too and I'm with you. My good friend and associate is one of the world's foremost aftermarket component traders. European, but based in Shenzhen. Same industry for 30 years. Clients include everyone who's anyone. When he stops telling me about record monthly profits after drinking, I'll believe it's over. Until then, no. FWIW, the beer-brag-barometer-index (BBBI) has been tracking solidly upward since 2019 with little exception.
- antoniuschan99 4y agoI don’t know if it happened for sure but I’ve been waiting for this component for a few weeks and it finally showed up on Texas Instruments website with 300,000 in stock. A day later it was out of stock. I then checked out Octopart and findchips and looked at the 3rd party resellers and I’m guessing they might have gobbled it up as I’ve read in other threads (the 3rd party resellers on Octopart showed like 10-40k in stock for that component)
- the_biot 4y agoSo the implication is that some resellers buy up gigantic amounts of components, to take advantage of the massive markups on them that people are prepared to pay right now. Course, if the price/supply on them drops to normal levels they're looking at an instant disaster, and will have to offload them at severe markdowns. Starting to understand why they say the IC market is cyclical, with wild swings between oversupply and undersupply.
- ericbarrett 4y agoNot sure the size/volume of your endeavor but it's possible the car manufacturers are leading indicators, given their size—it was a rude shock to them post-COVID that they had lost their place in line, but they're still big enough to muscle back to the front.
- 11thEarlOfMar 4y agoSame. Still seeing Xilinx FPGAs only available from brokers for $800. Lead time on the same chip >16 months.
- guerrilla 4y agoYou think it could just be because there's so many orders ahead of you but that the supply stream actually exists now but didn't before?
- RyanShook 4y agoI saw an article recently saying that dealerships and car makers want to keep inventories low because they like the post-covid margins they're experiencing. When I paid 5k over msrp a few months ago the salesperson claimed they wanted more inventory because salespeople were unable to hit the volume goals they have. Not sure who to believe but I'm sure the truth lies somewhere in between.
- AmVess 4y agoI'm sure they will all return to the way they did things prior to covid. All it will take is GM or Ford to start stacking new vehicles on car lots, and all of them will have to follow along.
- etempleton 4y agoFord leadership seems to really want to move to the Tesla preorder model, but changing this will be extremely difficult. This entrenched way of doing business may start seriously hurting their bottom line if Tesla and others can scale the direct to consumer model.
- ryanSrich 4y agoCar dealerships and the experience of being in one is truly like stepping into a different world/time. The only other industry that’s close is real estate. These types of businesses function as if the internet doesn’t exist. As if I can’t pull up the factory MSRP on my phone for a car, or find a house I want better than my realtor can on Redfin. I think the sooner all car makers move DTC the better.
- rootusrootus 4y agoThe preorder model only works with artificial scarcity. When the product is plentiful, people want it today. Nobody waits for their Tesla just because they can do it all online. They'll put up with the dealer hassle if it means getting the car today. Now, if you can get the online order model to work with really short lead times, this might gain more traction than usual. E.g. bring me a car to test drive, and very soon -- today ideally. Then I order the car, and you deliver it to my house on a trailer within a week. But months? No way, this is how you tell customers to go somewhere else.
- bluedino 4y agoI'm still 6-8 months out for a Toyota van
- technothrasher 4y agoI ordered a new Porsche SUV in the middle of December. It just got offloaded from the ship at port today, so I should finally have it in a couple weeks. But it will be missing some of the electronics, such as the electric steering wheel adjustment due to chip shortages. My poor sister-in-law also thought she ordered a Toyota in December. But as it turns out, the dealership just took advantage of her and told her they ordered her a car when really she gave the dealership a $500 deposit to let her know if a car ever comes in that matches what she wanted.
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- chrismmccomas 4y agoI had been shopping since January for a 2022 Tundra. I talked to salespeople at probably 75 dealerships on the east coast/mid-atlantic. Two of them said they could order me what I wanted, with a large deposit and I’d have to wait up to 90 days. The remaining all said basically they’re at the mercy of what Toyota makes and decides to allocate to their dealership.
- technothrasher 4y ago> The remaining all said basically they’re at the mercy of what Toyota makes and decides to allocate to their dealership. This is what the guy at my sister-in-law's dealership said after I got on the phone with him and asked him what the heck was going on with her order when what she was telling me didn't make sense. Would have been nice for him to admit that up front instead of just taking her money and smiling.
- cmccomas 4y agoWhat one salesman told me is that they do have a system where they can enter allocation requests. So they can enter into the system they want a '22 Tundra Crew Max with an exterior color of Lunar Rock and this/these packages. Toyota won't specifically build that, but in theory if there is one built matching that requirement they should get it as an allocation. In reality, he said they never get their allocation requests. Some dealerships (the 2 I mentioned in my research) tell people they're "ordering" when really they're just "requesting allocation."
- Vladimof 4y agoStill can't buy RaspberryPis... not sure if it's related. But for some reason I can still buy boat loads of ESP8266 and other micro-controllers...
- usrn 4y agoThat was a problem before the chip shortage.
- markus_zhang 4y agoPico is still available, even in Canada.
- jrockway 4y agoThe Pico is a great product, but probably not what people are looking for when they say "Raspberry Pi". If there was an Arduino shortage and you said "just get a RP2040", that would be helpful. But people want Linux boxes that make their 3D printer 4% faster or whatever.
- jazzyjackson 4y agoI am freshly obsessed with the RP2040 chip, last time I checked Digikey had like 90,000 in stock at 1USD a pop. I am really curious to what extent it could be configured to do the job of many of these out-of-stock chips that the car industry is hurting for, perhaps straight up emulate their I/O ?
- jfim 4y agoI doubt the RP2040 is automotive grade. Cars are pretty harsh environments for electronics, they have to operate in all kinds of climates, hot, cold, humid, dry, with condensation, vibration, large voltage spikes while the car is getting cranked, etc. I don't think any manufacturer would sign off on such a replacement, only to have to recall the cars later on due to the replacement chip failing.
- magicalhippo 4y agoKeep in mind that microcontrollers is just one of the type of chips that the car industry, and others, are lacking. Supporting ICs like power management/voltage regulators, opamps, ADC/DAC's, motor/bridge drivers, interface ICs like CAN bus drivers have all been massively out of stock. That said, as I understand it, a lot of the automotive microcontrollers are either specialized or they're part of an approved design. So switching them out is not trivial. On top of that it's the case of not being automotive grade as mentioned already.
- krasin 4y agoI have a hobby around electronics, and as a side effect, I have been keeping CSVs with all the components from JLCPCB Parts library for the last 6 months. It appears that we're slowly crawling out of the pit: date,in_stock,out_of_stock,in_stock/total 2022-06-06,185324,173101,0.517051 2022-06-05,185116,173227,0.516589 2022-06-01,184845,173355,0.516039 2022-05-28,183850,173676,0.514228 2022-05-21,181201,175377,0.508167 2022-05-14,180385,175690,0.506593 2022-04-26,178153,176255,0.502678 2022-04-03,176594,176008,0.500831 2022-01-30,157966,198345,0.443337 2022-01-20,156723,199302,0.440202 2022-01-12,155432,200341,0.436885 2022-01-03,121202,236497,0.338838 2021-12-29,121203,236475,0.338861 2021-12-21,119756,234600,0.337954 2021-12-16,119518,234779,0.337338 2021-12-13,121322,232820,0.34258 2021-12-12,121145,232939,0.342136
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- nneonneo 4y agoDo you have numbers from pre-supply crunch time?
- CamperBob2 4y agoEither that, or people are just giving up on new design starts for the time being (waves hand in air).
- amelius 4y agoDid you also notice that certain electromechanical components like connectors (e.g. from Molex) had supply issues? I wonder what the reason for that was.
- krasin 4y agoConnectors as a category are at 75% in stock, which is greater than across all categories (~51%). As for specific connectors / manufacturers: possibly. Panic buying + scalpers may have contributed.
- rob_c 4y agoHuzzah, finally people are starting to get back to normal as '22 progresses. Capitalism has its uses :p
- rootusrootus 4y agoIf the free market is working, whoever managed to ramp up production fastest will reap the rewards and put everyone else out of business. Good for them.
- aidenn0 4y agoCar companies try very hard to maintain two suppliers, so they will only be able to put all but one of their competitors out of business.
- SkyPuncher 4y agoThis overlooks brand preferences and a bunch of secondary effects. Most people looking to buy a _new_ car are not pressed to buy that car right now.
- sitkack 4y agoThe auto industry caused the vast majority of the chip problems we are seeing across all sectors. Eff em.
- tacojimjennings 4y agoI saw an article that mentioned Britian's 4 day work week trial, then saw this about the "chip" crisis easing and I was confused
- ck2 4y agoJust in time for $6 gas. Are people seriously going to buy anything other than a hybrid or full EV at this point?
- 0des 4y agoThis is not permanent.
- coding123 4y agoI'll wager the base is $6 after this. I'm currently paying $7 because I'm in CA and I have to buy Diesel after some drunk person totaled my non-truck.
- namecheapTA 4y agoIf this is the base, it'll just be a form of inflation and get lost pretty soon. Currently 1 hr of fast food labor buys you 2 gallons of gas. That's probably pretty close to what it was in 1996 also.
- fooker 4y ago> That's probably pretty close to what it was in 1996 also. No, this is wrong. Minimum wage in 1996 was around 5$ Per hour and gas was below 1$ per gallon.
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- namecheapTA 4y agoGas was not below $1 a gallon in 1996. Especially not in California. Also, cars weren't getting the mpg they are now. Cost per mile relative to minimum wage probably isn't that far off.. which you can probably see from data that basically everyone is driving as much as ever.. because other than mental sticker shock, it's still fine.
- sammalloy 4y agoI just noticed that inventories over at crutchfield.com are coming back to normal levels. Many of their products have been difficult to get over the last year due to the chip shortage.
- sircastor 4y agoI just bought out my lease, and the estimated dealer purchase price of my vehicle is substantially higher than what we paid for it. One of those situations where the script was flipped from what I expected.
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- satellite2 4y agoIn one week we got news that wood logs price are normalizing, that GPU and ram are starting to be available and price as per catalog and now that. It seems only oil price normalization is missing and that would mean the inflation was truly supply side and temporary.
- bezospen15 4y agoOh boy are you in for a surprise come end of quarter
- adrr 4y agoDemand side also drove up prices. Shipping times have almost doubled from Asia to the US due to increased freight.
- jjeaff 4y agoActually, the word used by the fed is transitory. They specifically didn't use the word temporary. They explained that by transitory, they meant that inflation may go up for a while, but it will stop going up after a short time. That doesn't necessarily mean it will go back down.
- notriskfree 4y agoWaiting longer is ok, it is waiting a random time in a unplanned way with a missed date that is very annoying and becomes expensive, not keeping to schedule will make consumers look elsewhere.
- zachshefska 4y agoThe ripple effects from the chip shortage will be felt for years … nearly all new cars are already “spoken for” and consumers will still be paying MSRP & MSRP+ for 12-18 months. What happens to used car prices over the coming 2-3 years will be fascinating. So many people will be underwater on their car loans.
- itsoktocry 4y ago>So many people will be underwater on their car loans. Can you clarify what you mean? A car is a rapidly depreciating asset; being underwater is the norm. It's only been during the pandemic that used vehicle prices have outstripped loan values.
- zachshefska 4y agoA lot of folks bought used cars at ridiculously high prices (over original MSRP when sold new in some cases). Banks approved them for those loans, and when the market corrects and used values come back in line (ie stop appreciating and depreciate again) those folks will be in severe negative equity positions.
- bluGill 4y agoPeople who bought a used car because they needed something now and couldn't get new (ie totaled their old car), they were probably planning on trading that car in for something new ASAP. People who buy new cars tend to trade them in every 3 years, so driving a 3 year old car is not normal. While a new car will be underwater for a time, normally by the time 3 years have passed it is worth about what you owe and so trading in isn't a loss.
- bluedino 4y agoPeople who bought used are really going to feel the pain
- dghughes 4y agoI sold my pig of a truck. Now I want an EV the $5K local government rebate new or used EV added to a $5K Federal rebate (new EV only) is a big incentive.
- elzbardico 4y agoI have an email account without MFA enabled with encrypted files containing stuff like recovery codes, password manager secrets and other essential stuff like that. I never use this account for anything else and never send emails from it (other than for itself to store new items), and the account name itself is kind of a passkey. Years later and I still haven't received spam on it. As long as <cloud free email provider> doesn't fuck me, looks like a sensible last resort to the failure of all other backups. Of course, not living in a house made of wood and cardboard also helps.