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Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

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

#241

Post by mikeyouse »

wonderwonder wrote: post #203
mikeyouse wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously most people can’t do this but a family member was recently approached by the dealer who sold him his most recent work truck. He’s driven like 30k miles on it in the past 2 years and it was a $75k Chevy diesel. Dealer offered him $90k to buy it back from him (to sell to someone else) and my family member said “Sure”. So he made $15k on an asset that should have lost 1/2 its value by now. Obviously rare and h…

I assume that in most situations like this the original person with the truck would have to replace that truck. In this case he now has to pay 90k for the truck he originally paid 75k for.

Perhaps, but it's not uncommon for these places buying new-off-the-lot high end trucks (my family members' included) to have a dozen+ vehicles at their disposal. He's planning on using his 5-year old similar HD truck until the market thaws a bit, but it's also overkill for most everything he does. One of the many work vans his business owns can likely do 95% of the work. They're mostly just buying the big ones for clout and due to generous tax writeoffs.

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

#242

Post by lallysingh »

cuu508 wrote: post #117
josephd79 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably not, regulation and crack down on pollution from vehicles. Have you ever rode in an older car that uses a carburetor instead of fuel injection? Nothing like the crisp smell of gasoline in the morning... or anytime you drive it.

Of course, you need some electronics. Let's rephrase: which cars from western mainstream manufacturers are currently the "lowest tech"? No infotainment, no digital dash, no touch-sensitive anything, as few sensors as is viable to still be road legal? And a related question: modern cars are full of tech because that's what market demands. Can we expect the trend to reverse at some point?

https://ineosgrenadier.com/ may hit the spirit of what you want best. There's still a screen, but mostly for Android Auto/Carplay.

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

#243

Post by blunte »

spsesk117 wrote: post #170
neals wrote: post #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…

I love playing Factorio, but it's moments like above when it starts to stop feeling like a game and it starts to feel like refactoring code at work.

Factorio is a nice and simplistic (and fun, for a while) way to demonstrated many aspects of software and product development.

You go through basic product planning and design, first quick MVP, then some feedback loops where you recognize some needed design changes, etc. Then once you have it figured out, you want more.

So you start scaling up. That scaling often necessitates refactoring, because it necessitates space and time management (no sense having a bottleneck in your system which limits your growth potential).

Then you have the aliens which represent unexpected problems and failures.

A while back someone posted about playing Factorio with job candidates as a way to see how they thing and solve problems. This is probably much better than most tech interviews. If you can be decent at Factorio, you can probably be pretty decent as a software developer.

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

#244

Post by xyzelement »

fartcannon wrote: post #227
xyzelement wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 u…

When I was in my early 20s, someone gave me this exact advice. I didn't have much money and they said that real estate was too expensive and I should just invest/rent. Fast forward to today, I paid 8x more for my small sad house than I would have then and my investments on my small amount of money didn't make up the difference. The market is so screwed up that even a crash that halved the price would still be 4 times…

Finance guy here, two things. You are looking at it in retrospect. "I should have bought a house" is no different than "I should have bought X stock" when you're looking at the price history backwards. At the time, it could have gone up or down. EG we just bought a house, I have many reasons to expect that it could drop in value over the next bunch of years.

Second, you may not be doing proper calculations. I would not have - before I bought a house. Do you count property taxes, upkeep, larger water and electricity bills, possibly longer commute times/needing a car, relative lack of mobility, air conditioner/heating/roofing/siding/repair, lawn maintenance, etc.

Yes sure, if I bought this house 10 years ago, it would have been great. But I wouldn't know 10 years ago that I'd want this house, and for example dealing with all the above shit as a single man would have been stupid. There were also points in my life where I was very open to relocation for the right job, something home ownership would have put friction on.

it's very common to think of only a pro or a con of a decision (if I bought earlier, it would have only cost X) but you're not factoring the risk that existed at the time, nor the commitment you're creating on yourself, not the carrying costs I described above.

May not be relevant to you but I feel fine about "losing out" on 20 years of house appreciation (if I bought at 20 not 40) because I avoided all that stuff for 20 years, too.

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

#245

Post by steve_adams_86 »

acdha wrote: post #163
bongoman37 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a kid that's not a workable solution, moreover, safety is a huge issue on 2 wheelers.

I’ve taken my son on an e-bike daily since he was 11 months old - he loves it compared to being in the car. There are a range of products on the market handling up to 4 kids and with creature comforts like rain shields. I use one of these: https://yubabikes.com/cargobikestore/electric-boda-boda/ A relative uses one of these in the Boston area, year round: https://www.ternbicycles.com/us/bikes/472/gsd A friend loves t…

For anyone with a small commute I’d recommend this too. Our Yuba (spicy curry) has around 3000km on it over 2.5 years, is going strong, and I’ll still be commuting ~30km per week over the next year with it taking my 4 year old to daycare then going to work. I’ll likely continue commuting with him on it to kindergarten and perhaps early grade school.

It wasn’t cheap initially ($7000 CAD), but the cost per km drops enormously every year while the bike still rides as well as ever. The kids have all loved it, too. My youngest is disappointed when we drive places - he wants to walk or ride all year.

We do have a temperate climate which helps. Our cold days in winter are typically around 5 degrees outside of cold snaps, but even then we rarely dip below 0.

It’s a major quality of life improvement for us. They’re amazing grocery getters, you don’t get all sweaty on them, kids tend to love it, and they’re quite a bit easier to buy, maintain, and park than a car.

We went with the spicy curry because of its insane cargo capacity (we’ve used it for its full capacity many times, especially while bike camping), but you can spend far less if you don’t need to carry that weight.

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

#246

Post by UseStrict »

ghaff wrote: post #104
brobdingnagians wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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.

Vehicles made a massive leap forward with the introduction of electronic components - fuel injection, oxygen sensors, throttle control. Not to mention essential safety components like traction control computers and anti-lock braking. There's no way a vehicle without these features would pass any sort of environmental or safety regulation today.

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

#247

Post by eldaisfish »

btbuildem wrote: post #236

I don't see this raised anywhere -- but what's so bad about producing fewer cars (the poor neglected shareholders and exec bonuses aside)? It's almost as if we would need to lean into this, reducing growth and producing fewer cars would be in line with efforts to mitigate the drivers of climate change. What if car manufacturers pivoted their KPIs and focused on making long-lasting, serviceable vehicles? Toyota is alr…

Consider for a moment the people outside the developed world whose lives are greatly improved by cars.

Scarcity drives prices up putting things out of their reach.

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

#248

Post by ptero »

JackPoach wrote: post #180
yalogin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car prices won't go back to normal again though. They will come up clever financing schemes to make people pay but the prices will never be reduced.

There's huge inflation in many things related to making cars (chips, steel, shipping costs as many cars are still being shipped across the ocean, labor costs, etc.). We are likely to be in the very beginning of significant inflation cycle, with probably double digit inflation which will eventually drop to 4-4.5%. I wouldn't expect to prices to drop any time soon, nor have 2% inflation. My bet is that fewer and fewer…

It's not just cars, the prices are rising across the board (not evenly), so we have pretty high inflation if you add in the items official estimates excluded.

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

#249

Post by dahfizz »

heliodor wrote: post #219
malfist wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I capitalized on it by buying a new car and selling my old one. I sold a 3 year old camaro for $1000 less than I paid for it. I didn't get very much off MSRP of the new car, but I got way more value from a three year old camaro than I ever expected to get.

So... you got more for your used car and paid more for your new one. Which is exactly the point being made by the parent comment that you can't capitalize on the upside. You'd have to sell and step out for a while.

Used cars used to be worth x% of a new car.

Today, they are worth x+y% of a new car.

If you trade up now, you will pay less for the new car than if you traded up two years ago.

Similar situation for houses. Even if we assume all houses have inflated by the same rate, you can still downsize and cash out. Your existing $600K house is inflated 25% and you can sell for $750k. You downsize to a $400k house which is inflated to $500k. You oversold for $150k, but only overpaid by $100k and you pocket the difference.

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

#250

Post by selimthegrim »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #72

I looked for a simple non-electronic car recently to buy, and found out that the government has mandated numerous safety systems requiring electronics like backup cameras, no seatbelt alarms, blind spot monitoring, lane assist etc, and in the upcoming infrastructure bill there is a rider to add breathalyzers to every new car made in America. (ref below) Is there an officially designated cost/reduced risk ratio that p…

You might want to look up the marginal cost of a backup camera what with CCDs these days
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