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The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

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Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#411

Post by salawat »

ericbarrett wrote: post #295
systemvoltage wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trucks are vehicles. How can they be political? I know plenty of people from all kinds of backgrounds owning a truck.

"Rolling coal" (modifying a diesel engine to run rich and increase soot in the exhaust, a.k.a. incompletely combusted fuel) has become a statement in many places of the U.S. that you are opposed to the EPA, clean air rules, regulation, and in general the perceived nanny state. My friend is a Tesla owner in Georgia and has been deliberately blasted by these guys at stoplights a few times. They tried, anyway—hard to do…

I don't understand it myself. I'm fascinated by the energy extraction from a properly calibrated diesel engine. They get more efficient the more air you pump in.

Ruining that for the sake of pissing people off seems a travesty against the machine.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#412

Post by varispeed »

giardini wrote: post #363
varispeed wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I change a car every few years and this year is the time. So while I have been looking at what can I get now, I found that my current car is worth more now than when I bought it used 3 years ago. Crazy...

So keep it. Many posters here might be happy to buy your "old" car and drive it another 4-6 years. Do it yourself.

I'll keep it definitely. At least for another year or two.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#413

Post by BeetleB »

dahfizz wrote: post #188
seltzered_ wrote: post #170

Regarding cars: "Some carmakers are now leaving out high-end features as a result of the chip shortage, according to a Bloomberg report on Thursday. Nissan is reportedly leaving navigation systems out of cars that would normally have them, while Ram Trucks has stopped equipping its 1500 pickups with a standard “intelligent” rearview mirror that monitors for blind spots" I have an unpopular opinion, especially when we…

I definitely agree that car size inflation is a real problem. Cars are too big and getting bigger every year. That said, "good visibility" is not a replacement for safety tech. The sensors and cameras in a car are always going to be better at spotting danger than a human for things like blind spot monitoring and backup cameras. You sound a bit like the teachers that would drill mental math because "you won't always h…

> The sensors and cameras in a car are always going to be better at spotting danger than a human for things like blind spot monitoring and backup cameras.

Any data to back this up? Note that there is a difference between "always better" and "generally better". The former needs only one counterexample.

My car has on several occasions failed to detect that there is a car in front of me, and would have happily crashed into it. About once a year, it also suddenly applies the brake hard thinking there is a car in front of me when there isn't. That is quite dangerous - were there a car behind me it would have rear ended me.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#414

Post by throwawayboise »

nradov wrote: post #370
throwawayboise wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you had walked out the door they would have run after you to take the cash deal AND given you the discount. You think they prefer to deal with the time and uncertainty of putting you through a loan application, when they could pocket the same sale in cash? Nobody is coming out with less money on a loan purchase vs. cash, except the buyer.

You simply don't understand how modern franchise dealers operate. Cash discounts are no longer a thing. Due to incentives they prefer to finance through the manufacturer's captive lender. The F&I guy is already sitting there in his office with nothing else to do and as long as you have a decent credit score the approval process takes literally a few minutes. Sure the dealer will take cash if that's how you want to pa…

Not my experience. I have always gotten the best deals paying cash, and threatening to walk away.

The key is to not get emotionally invested in owning the car before you actually own the car. A lot of people can't do that.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#415

Post by avs733 »

nostromo wrote: post #291
neltnerb wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that this is a potential big problem, but I had to stop reading when the dog washing company blamed needing to respin a new board on a chip being out of stock due to this. I'm sorry, but if you aren't buying enough chips to build all the boards you want to build of a revision, this is just what happens, chip shortage or no. Stuff gets obsoleted all the time, it doesn't take a chip shortage. Blaming a black swan…

This is largely a result of just-in-time manufacturing. Companies hate holding on to inventory. Most companies now don’t hold on to any extra stock needed to manufacture their products. This is great for your finances in normal times. But don’t complain when there is a shortage and you literally have zero slack for delays and your factory sits idle — that’s the well-known drawback.

I agree but with a caveat, it's largely a result of BAD just-in-time manufacturing. Zero inventory production systems (ZIPS) are what people often mean when they talk about JIT, they are different. Toyota, one of the originators and leaders of JIT/lean has not had this problem...because they don't blindly ZIPS [0].

Not holding inventory is great for a lot of reasons, but it is a calculated risk...Toyota learned from experience that if they want to do it, they need to understand risk all the way up their supply chain. They largely aren't having this problem. They de-risked certain things because they really treat TPS and everything associated with it as a philosophy not a set of heuristics that should just be implemented blindly. Manufacturing something is all tradeoffs...there is (almost) nothing with a universal upside. Sure I want to hold less inventory, but JIT is actually about manufacturing time, not inventory. If I have NO inventory and NO ability to get inventory my manufacturing time goes up while I wait with my thumb in the fertilizer pipe.

I've worked with a couple of manufacturing plants (and consultants...) that treat 'JIT' inventory management as something that can simply be pushed off to vendors and then the upside of less inventory enjoyed. They have specs and forms and certification and paperwork...but nobody looks at it. Those are the companies struggling now. They outsourced without fully understanding the risk of the outsourcing. Usually this doesn't bite the world, it bites one or two companies that relied on a certain part (someone misses an EOL notice) or a certain vendor (who goes bust because the owner's grandson ran the thing into the ground). It's like my students who make choices in the first week of the semester that seem minor...and then are frustrated when it effects their grade at the end of the semester (sorry, too much grading this week)

[0] https://www.autoblog.com/2021/03/09/toyota-how-it-avoided-se...

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#416

Post by tpmx »

d136o wrote: post #408
tpmx wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making a chip has been something that has been done completely methodically since their invention The yield improvement process seems like it has a lot common with e.g. baking and intuition.

Sure, at the invention/research step, after that’s done it’s all about sequencing the exact series of steps (robots following the recipe) to get to the output.

Software development is the invention/research phase; software distribution is the automated phase.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#417

Post by throwawayboise »

chrisseaton wrote: post #358
throwawayboise wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you had walked out the door they would have run after you to take the cash deal AND given you the discount. You think they prefer to deal with the time and uncertainty of putting you through a loan application, when they could pocket the same sale in cash? Nobody is coming out with less money on a loan purchase vs. cash, except the buyer.

I think you're mistaken about how dealerships and car sales are structured, at least in places like the UK and the US. Maybe it's different where you are? They get a proportion of the sale price, and they get paid a referral fee for you opening a loan, and then on top of that they can offer extras that you probably don't need like fabric protection products. > Nobody is coming out with less money on a loan purchase v…

> they get paid a referral fee for you opening a loan

Which is added in to the finance charges or amount borrowed. Ever wonder why the salesmen always want to negotiate a "payment" amount instead of a purchase price?

> No they'd just have sold to someone willing to pay their price.

And I'd have just gone to another dealer willing to work with me on my terms.

> There's a car supply shortage

True, and that causes higher prices overall. But negotiation strategies for getting the best deal haven't changed.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#418

Post by mbreese »

sokoloff wrote: post #362
wetpaws wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found them invaluable, especially BSM saved me from a lot of near-crash situations. When dealing with fast deadly chunks of metal every % of reduced chance of death is a good investment in my book.

How many serious crashes or near-serious-crashes were you in in your prior cars without BSM? Assuming no other changes, that seems the most realistic measure of risk reduction.

You can’t measure the risk of a rare event like this. Accidents are (thankfully) rare events. There is too much variability with a single person. You can really only measure these risks across an entire fleet of cars. Rare events are Poisson distributed, which requires many observations to be significant.

So your question should be, across all cars, how many accidents have there been with and without blind spot monitors? Even then, it would be hard to control for all other factors (newer cars have blind spot monitoring, but are also safer in general, you need to compare similar years, traffic conditions, etc).

All of that to say — any single comment online is just an anecdote.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#419

Post by blueblisters »

ajross wrote: post #62
ferros wrote: post #3

> Production of low-margin processors, such as those used to weigh clothes in a washing machine or toast bread in a smart toaster, has also been hit. While most retailers are still able to get their hands on these products at the moment, they may face issues in the months ahead. I understand why the new advanced chips could face shortages, but why are there shortages for these basic chips. Can’t they be made anywhere…

> why are there shortages for these basic chips? Can’t they be made anywhere, and more easily? Not really. Semiconductor fabs are built around "tools" from manufacturers like AMAT and Nikon. Those tool vendors make most of their money from selling new tools for fancy new processes, not supporting 20-year-old stuff. Eventually stuff breaks, and fabs have to offline these older processes. The way this works in the tech…

It’s not just about supporting new processes. Many tool/machine vendors are backlogged by years because they simply don’t have the capacity to make more than a few of those machines every year. Even if someone wanted to invest in new manufacturing, they would likely have to wait a few years to start production.

Secondly, some legacy manufacturers of semiconductor parts lost money on their capacity-building investments during the dot-com burst. The semiconductor industry is brutal and there is a genuine fear that overcapacity will make it hard to deal with any bust that happens after this boom.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#420

Post by imtringued »

syshum wrote: post #202
jimbob45 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that you accrue the interest yourself instead of paying it to someone else.

Interest on savings accounts is far less than inflation, out side of an emergency fund there is little reason to save cash.

Isn't the benefit of the car loan that you can have emergency funds? I mean, if you save up $5k and get a car loan for $25k you for years you effectively have a 2 year emergency buffer.

If you pay off the car up front you may run into liquidity issues until you have restored your emergency fund.

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