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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah yes, the most important function of a car, the paint...
Rust is a thing.
Edit: Alright, maybe declining trend: https://electrek.co/2017/08/22/tesla-model-3-body-alloy-mix/
As a chip supplier, I'd be feeling a lot of pressure right now. In the short term you can squeeze and the tail can wag the dog for a bit. But longer term this opens the door wide open for new competitors in the market and / or vertical integration.
I've noticed that the shortage of chips is also strongly driven by speculators simply buying up everything in sight and trying to resell at multiples of the cost.
Toyota was one of the few (only?) companies to keep a large stockpile of chips on hand to continue production in case of a supply interruption. They kept something like two years worth on hand. I guess 18 months of doing the extremely heavy lifting for the whole industry has taken its toll and now they're in the same boat.
Maybe this is a dumb question, but does anyone still produce cars without chips? It's possible, and in the current environment it seems like it would be a major competitive advantage-- and might be more reliable in general.
As Taleb likes to say, an efficient system is the opposite of a robust system, kind of by definition. We are now witnessing the effects of our modern hyper-efficient just-in-time global manufacturing system.
Toyota was one of the few (only?) companies to keep a large stockpile of chips on hand to continue production in case of a supply interruption. They kept something like two years worth on hand. I guess 18 months of doing the extremely heavy lifting for the whole industry has taken its toll and now they're in the same boat.
Most auto companies don't take delivery of chips except for managing production of a few key modules like engine controllers. Most of the chips in your car are in components made by suppliers with circuit boards often made by a second tier supplier. Combine that with many chips having no alternate and I don't see how Toyota could really stay exempt from this problem. OTOH not every chip maker is having trouble keepin…
One criticism of Toyota's production system is that they aren't so much "just in time" as it sounds on the surface, rather they just force their suppliers to run the warehouse instead of them. Which still makes sense - Toyota wants to be in the car business, not the warehouse and logistics businesses.
Toyota was one of the few (only?) companies to keep a large stockpile of chips on hand to continue production in case of a supply interruption. They kept something like two years worth on hand. I guess 18 months of doing the extremely heavy lifting for the whole industry has taken its toll and now they're in the same boat.
Maybe this is a dumb question, but does anyone still produce cars without chips? It's possible, and in the current environment it seems like it would be a major competitive advantage-- and might be more reliable in general.
"Porsche will provide cars with ‘fake chips’ to reduce delivery times" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28042518
That makes no sense. I wonder what they mean by "fake" chips? Are they simply not placing the chip on the board, or are they using a footprint compatible different chip (unlikely), or are they completely redesigning the board with another chip which has much better availability? (most likely)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Toyota is not "sabotaging clean cars", only trying to delay regulations.
So not sabotaging, only obstructing. I'm so pissed at all the auto-makers (with the exception of Tesla). The writing has been on the wall for at least a decade in large neon letters, but they all seem taken by surprise that they suddenly have to produce electric cars.