Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40% • Hacker News Board

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

#511

Post by m23khan » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

Here in Toronto, Canada:

One fallout of this is the rise in prices of old / used cars. To give you an idea, a 2018 Toyota/Honda minivan is Canadian dollars 10,000 higher than pre-covid times.

It's ok for folks who have a newish car and want to buy another used car as their current car prices would have increased. But if you are like me, who drives a 15+ year rusty old car and is desperate to buy a 3-4 year old car, then good luck. Not only are the prices much higher (and your car's value is junk) but at the same time, inventory (even for used cars) is super low.

I would have loved to live in a City / Country where car is not necessary but this city I live is built for cars...

Purely as a joke:

Maybe car manufacturers should revive the production lines to produce 1980s Toyota Cressidas, Camrys and Chevy Impalas.

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

#512

Post by zsmi » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

duncanawoods wrote: post #322

mathattack wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the opposite. Need to let people raise prices to encourage slack in the system. Let’s prices settle where chip makers can produce new chips. There are market failures where the government needs to step in, but this isn’t one. Even with climate change (where they should step in) the government can’t get to the point of saying it’s ok for gas prices to be high. We don’t want the government to pick winners and lose…

It's a puzzle to me why companies like nvidia didn't just raise prices and instead left both customers and profit to the dirty world of scalpers. I guess it's "brand damage" but I feel there would be something more fair and honest if in times of tight supply they ran their own ebay-like store and auctioned them off. It wouldn't feel like a price hike and prices could automatically settle as supply/demand reaches pari…

> It's a puzzle to me why companies like nvidia didn't just raise prices

They did. There have been at least three major prices increases which rocked entire industries.

There have been reports of people paying 30x the usual price.

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3133901/europe...

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

#513

Post by blueblisters » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #417

Scoundreller wrote: post #328

Many countries have a funny concept of strategic industries. In mine, dairy is a strategic industry that is coddled by government so that we can have a local source. But every country thinks that so there’s foes and allies that can supply us UHT or powder milk on a moment’s notice. And if our milk supply disappeared tomorrow, everyone over 1y could substitute with 10000000 different things for nutrition. Cars are ano…

How much would it cost to set up TSMC inside US borders? One president cycle? 4 F-35s? One SLS? A nuclear submarine? According to this page, sorting by cost, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... the most expensive fab is 33 Giga$. TSMC is 17G$. pennies on the dollar in our 1-3Trillion infrastructure bill. Make america fab again. EDIT: it appears this is in the 2T infrastructure bill. https:…

Building it is one thing. Making it operational without importing talent and running it profitably is another. Taiwan has some of the best fab engineers who work at US minimum wage salaries. Of course you can pull them away with higher pay like China is doing, but that means profitability will likely go for a toss.

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

#514

Post by frankchn » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

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…

The DOT and the NHTSA considers that value to be $6.3 million per "statistical life" in 2009 dollars [1]

[1]: https://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/administration/pdf/Value_o...

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

#515

Post by heresie-dabord » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

kristofferR wrote: post #6

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-...

Large-battery EVs (LBEVs) are an unscalable luxury, both for cost and recharging infrastructure. Even if Toyota has chosen to advance its interests more aggressively, the criticism of the EV market is valid.

The electrical infrastructures of the US and the EU are not able to support a total adoption of EVs, especially not LBEVs. Consumers appear to be choosing LBEVs, not small-battery EVs. They want range even though most people need only a range of less than 100km. [1]

Toyota's (or anyone else's) hybrid vehicles are a better choice for combination short-range/long-range drivers, where short trips are clean, and long trips use the energy density of petrol.

IMHO what Toyota should be doing is adding a larger battery to its hybrids, e.g. 17 kWh instead of 8.8 kWh. I believe the Honda Clarity has a 17 kWh battery.

From your articles:

“Toyota’s view is also that countries are jumping in with the idea of the electric-vehicle endgame without a real plan, and it’s more political showmanship than sound planning,” Mr. Liker said.

Toyota will inevitably be marketing EVs, though.

"For one, China, an important market for Toyota, has moved aggressively to require automakers there to make electric vehicles. That has spurred Toyota to start producing electric cars under a joint venture."

[1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1128626_why-you-really-...

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

#516

Post by Tade0 » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

lostapathy wrote: post #92

Tade0 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposite is true - the manufacturing process is responsible for an average of 7-10 tonnes of CO2, while the same vehicle over its lifetime will emit more than 50 tonnes from the exhaust. Moreover manufacturers have been reducing their carbon footprint lately. As an example VW reports that 70% of the energy the use in plants is provided by renewable sources. That being said while emissions rules have been getting…

> As an example VW reports that 70% of the energy the use in plants is provided by renewable sources. This is a great start, but not where most of the carbon embodied in a new vehicle comes from. The energy used by the VW plants keeps the lights on, air conditioned, and powers tools for assembly. Most of the carbon embodied in a car comes from the energy it takes to mine raw materials and process them into useful met…

> Most of the carbon embodied in a car comes from the energy it takes to mine raw materials and process them into useful metals.

Yes, and that is included in this estimate.

Producing a tonne of steel emits 1.85t of CO2. The estimate for mining and processing is "just" 270kg/t:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324486263_Analysis_...

This pales in comparison to the 20 tonnes of fuel a typical car is going to work itself through throughout its lifetime. And all this fuel has to be first extracted and refined.

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

#517

Post by monocasa » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

KuiN wrote: post #479

imaginariet wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In UK, where NHS is publicly owned, it was actually policy to have 90% occupancy of ICU beds. If it was less than that, the "extra" beds would be removed.

Do you have a source for that quite extraordinary claim?

Not the parent, and not a backup for the specific claim, but I know that Tory governments since Thatcher have been taking the strategy of misapplying business efficiency tactics to NHS, then when they don't make sense and cause worse outcomes claim that it's because government was involved at all and call for privatization.

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

#518

Post by ed_balls » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #417

Scoundreller wrote: post #328

Many countries have a funny concept of strategic industries. In mine, dairy is a strategic industry that is coddled by government so that we can have a local source. But every country thinks that so there’s foes and allies that can supply us UHT or powder milk on a moment’s notice. And if our milk supply disappeared tomorrow, everyone over 1y could substitute with 10000000 different things for nutrition. Cars are ano…

How much would it cost to set up TSMC inside US borders? One president cycle? 4 F-35s? One SLS? A nuclear submarine? According to this page, sorting by cost, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... the most expensive fab is 33 Giga$. TSMC is 17G$. pennies on the dollar in our 1-3Trillion infrastructure bill. Make america fab again. EDIT: it appears this is in the 2T infrastructure bill. https:…

in a few years there will be 10x number of factories. Covid just sped things up. It's too critical for army and other industries. Food and army cannot be outsourced.

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

#519

Post by Johnny555 » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

namelessoracle wrote: post #505

nickff wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly visible industries tend to get a disproportionate number of subsidies, because the population can relate to them, and politicians aren't that clever either. Film and television are good examples, and fishing tends to get a lot of attention too.

Pretty much everyone understands that computer chips are needed for everything these days though. The population can relate just fine. It's just there's no one rich and powerful who wants to make the investment that is making it an issue.

I'm not sure that the population can relate to building a semiconductor ecosystem in the USA -- when a state gives incentives to bring movie production there, people think "Well look at all of those jobs and movies give our state great exposure", but when the government wants to spend billions helping to build a next-gen fab plant here, then it's like "wait, I paid thousands of dollars for my phone and computer, why are we paying them to build plants here, don't we pay them enough!?"

You may say "But semiconductors are used in far more devices than phones and computers", but I'm not sure the average person realizes that. Well maybe they are now when they can't buy the car they want because it's delayed due to semiconductor availability.

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

#520

Post by NotSammyHagar » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #473

jvanderbot wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much would it cost to set up TSMC inside US borders? One president cycle? 4 F-35s? One SLS? A nuclear submarine? According to this page, sorting by cost, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... the most expensive fab is 33 Giga$. TSMC is 17G$. pennies on the dollar in our 1-3Trillion infrastructure bill. Make america fab again. EDIT: it appears this is in the 2T infrastructure bill. https:…

Cost isn't the issue, it's that we have incompetent buffoons as presidents these days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuW4oGKzVKc That's what a president sounds like.

I agree that a president speaking to goals like that would be incredible. But he didn't have almost half the country supporting complete fantastical claims and a decent fraction trying to overturn elections.

But look what he did against racism vs Johnson (not that much compared to J.), and they both still pushed the Vietnam war. Kennedy had to work around the edges on entrenched racism to maintain his Democratic majority with southern votes. At least the parties are more honest about their proclivities today.