Live data from Hacker News

Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

bbc.com

151–160 of 720 posts

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#151
post #99

The article (and others about this topic) indicate that the chip shortage isn't just a static. They all claim that chip and other supply chains (all based on South East Asian) are all under new pressure from delta strain spread. In fact, I wonder how much of this really is chip supply vs general supply. Most articles on this open with headlines about chip supply, but then contains quotes from Toyota about "supply" an…

Yeah, this also makes no sense to me: > The Covid pandemic boosted demand for appliances that use chips, such as phones, TVs and games consoles. SOCs in phones and game consoles are produced on very different processes than chips used in cars, no? Cars don't need the smallest dies or most energy-efficient chips. These industries are not competing for the same capacity. Or am I missing something?

Not everything is a purpose built CPU, GPU or SoC on cutting edge nodes. There are many general purpose ICs that are boring and ubiquitous: Display drivers, power conversion, amplifiers, microcontrollers, etc.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#152

Good! Toyota has been sabotaging clean cars because they can't compete [1][2]. Most well known car brands have great electric cars now, but Toyota and their oil lobby buddies are trying to halt the progress. The decline of Toyota sales is good news for the world. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/climate/toyota-electric-h... [2] https://insideevs.com/features/524481/toyota-hybrid-pioneer-...

Please write back when Tesla learns how to correctly apply paint to a car or fit body panels, or well, pretty much everything else that makes an actual car a car instead of a disposable gadget.

Tesla does not equal electric cars. Most well known brands have great electric cars now, not to mention all the new brands like Nio and Polestar.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#153
post #21

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.

I thought Toyota invented not doing that.

I don't think that's exactly true and actually may be a common misconception - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1JlYZQG3lI for a much better explanation than I could provide.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#154

So new cars are going to be come more expensive due to supply limitations and in turn used cars will continue to become more expensive as they can rise to a certain % of the new car price. At the same time housing prices continue to sky rocket. Seems like not a great time for someone just stepping into adulthood and financial responsibility.

> just stepping into adulthood and financial responsibility.

I am older than that (40 and my wife is 35) and while we have been independent professionals for a while, we now have a 1 year old so this summer for the first time in our lives we bought a house and a car.

It was definitely harder to find a house (mainly less availability driving competitive bidding) and it took a little longer to find a car and we ended up having to pay MSRP.

However the thing I can say is - the incremental cost/hassle of having to do these things during the pandemic supply crunch is almost irrelevant compared to having to do this stuff at all. We paid say 3% more for the car and ok maybe 10/20% for the house than we would have otherwise, obviously that's painful but if I was "just stepping into adulthood and financial responsibility" I'd look to avoid this stuff altogether.

EG: do you need to own a house? If you're a single person, "throwing away" money on a relatively inexpensive rental might be much wiser than "investing" in a house in a seller's market. Likewise, if you're young and single then you should relatively easily (depending on where you live of course) arrange your life to not need a car. It was very easy for us in NYC, of course may be different for you.

The point is that in my mind, "adulthood and financial responsibility" don't have to translate "got my own house and car" but simply "making wise financial decisions given my situation" so if there's room to be flexible, be flexible.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#155

So new cars are going to be come more expensive due to supply limitations and in turn used cars will continue to become more expensive as they can rise to a certain % of the new car price. At the same time housing prices continue to sky rocket. Seems like not a great time for someone just stepping into adulthood and financial responsibility.

but stop and think for a second about all those short term profits Wall Street made by outsourcing all of our crucial manufacturing! Those congressional bribes don't pay themselves either! /s the worst part is our government is rewarding them for bad behavior, the article mentions the billion dollar chip subsidy program. So these companies made money outsourcing and will now make more by bringing it back. Instead the…

What short term profits? The car industry has among the lowest margins in the entire economy.

Moreover the chips were never outsourced. Toyota never made its own chips, nor is it feasible to. You seem to have some sort of idealized view where a company internally manufactures everything it needs starting from raw materials. That’s not how it works, and that’s never how it worked.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#156
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and might be more reliable in general Cars in, say, the 1960s were not "more reliable in general." It's not all semiconductor-related of course--they also rusted out quickly in areas that got snow--but 5 years/50K miles is about what you were looking at for vehicle lifetime. Also much lower fuel efficiency, to say nothing of lack of what we'd consider routine safety features today.

The many Cubans driving cars from pre-1959 would be surprised to hear this.

The fact that clunkers can be kept running at some level for an extended period of time (especially if they're not somewhere that the frame will simply rust out from road salt) doesn't change the fact that what people in developed countries would consider reliable day-to-day transportation has a significantly longer life cycle than it used to.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have not even been out long enough to make that claim. Especially when comparing to Toyota.

You're talking to the parent comment that is making early claims about quality? Oh ok it's only allowed to making negative claims about Tesla

> Oh ok it's only allowed to making negative claims about Tesla

I do not understand what this means. But I am simply stating that the data for ICE vehicles is far longer and the dataset larger, especially for Toyota and other reputable brands, to make a conclusive claim that Tesla’s reliability (and even maintenance) is less over the whole life of the vehicle.

Although I do not doubt that it is possible for electric vehicles to achieve this claim, and maybe Tesla already has.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#158
post #101

So new cars are going to be come more expensive due to supply limitations and in turn used cars will continue to become more expensive as they can rise to a certain % of the new car price. At the same time housing prices continue to sky rocket. Seems like not a great time for someone just stepping into adulthood and financial responsibility.

The difference being that lots of people want to keep those inflated housing prices high (nimbyism), whereas nearly everyone wants car prices to go back to normal.

>> whereas nearly everyone wants car prices to go back to normal.

There is a significant voice that would like to price cars out of private ownership. Traffic, pollution, safety, urban sprawl ... pick your evil and someone wants to eliminate private cars for that reason.

I regularly read about how the next wave of cars will all be somehow "shared", that we will whistle and they will appear at our doorsteps ready to carry us off to our 9-to-5 jobs in shiny glass office towers. I just don't see that happening anytime soon. Total conversion to electric cars in 10 years, maybe. Conversion to total ride-sharing and/or mass transit, doubtful in 30.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#160
Come on, we all know this problem and we all know the solution. It's probably red-circuits that we are talking about here. We've all been there: you have your yellow belts full of green-circuits, but the red ones are just so much more complex. You need to set up the entire oil production chain for that, which is tedious and you probably rushed it just 'get a few red circuits so I can get my electric furnace'...

I say, take a step back, take some time and really automate plastic-bar production (yes, even the oil wells and refineries, and don't just put rocks in a container, belt them over there like a grown-up)

Only after producting enough for a full red belt, should you continue expanding into other branches, like robots and faster belts.

Don't they teach this stuff anymore?

Post reply on HN