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Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

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Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#101

Post by argonaut »

Aloha wrote: post #72
csours wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclosure: I work for GM. Anything expressed here is solely my own opinion and experience. I think each statement is true. Context: for ages, OEMs (the factory) have had a belief that Americans will not wait to buy a car. There's also a bit of a prisoner's dilemma: if any automaker wanted to trim inventories, the customer could go to a competing automaker's lot and buy today. Since customers will not wait to buy a c…

I wish dealers made it easier to order cars, before the supply shortage, I couldn't get a dealer to place an order for exactly what I wanted, which was invariably never what was stocked. I'd rather return to a build to order model, with greater variety of configuration options. What I wanted was in a color not commonly stocked, with an unusual interior color, and the upgraded engine, with all the packages - but witho…

I don't know if this applied to your situation, but some automakers don't accept custom orders from dealers. Toyota comes to mind, for example.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#102

Post by walrus01 »

KerrAvon wrote: post #86
walrus01 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Context: for ages, OEMs (the factory) have had a belief that Americans will not wait to buy a car. On the contrary, we recently added a 3rd car, and it ended up being a $4000 used Toyota Camry. My first choice would have been a Corolla or civic but none were available at a reasonable price, condition and mileage. Due to the well known rise in used car prices. It's in good enough condition and meets all the requirem…

I applaud you for not taking the bait on the Model 3, which is overrated, but I cannot fathom purchasing an appliance car like a Camry. You can’t possibly enjoy driving it. Why not at least a Honda?

I literally said it's a 3rd car, what makes you think one of my other two cars isn't something fast and fun, that runs on premium gas and eats through expensive Z rated tires? Its per km cost is considerably higher. Maybe I don't want to use it for like, buying groceries at Costco, and with two seats it's not very much good at all for picking up family members with luggage from the airport.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#103

Post by fooker »

namecheapTA wrote: post #88
coding123 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll wager the base is $6 after this. I'm currently paying $7 because I'm in CA and I have to buy Diesel after some drunk person totaled my non-truck.

If this is the base, it'll just be a form of inflation and get lost pretty soon. Currently 1 hr of fast food labor buys you 2 gallons of gas. That's probably pretty close to what it was in 1996 also.

> That's probably pretty close to what it was in 1996 also.

No, this is wrong. Minimum wage in 1996 was around 5$ Per hour and gas was below 1$ per gallon.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#104

Post by kube-system »

hansvm wrote: post #93
kube-system wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found (in the US at least) that automaker financing on new vehicles is usually better than any other banks. I'm now wishing I put zero down on my last car, because it's looking like my loan is way cheaper than inflation is going to be over the life of the loan.

Last time I thought financing might be a good idea, the dealership asked who I banked with, applied for a loan in my name without my permission, and presented it to me +0.5% extra profit for them. They were just going to insert themselves as an intermediary.

Hard to do that with automaker financing when the rates are listed directly on their website.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#105

Post by cormacrelf »

CameronNemo wrote: post #100
cormacrelf wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're even reliable in the way they break down. Parts are cheap worldwide, every mechanic ever can work with them, and the service life of components seems to be staggered such that you only get a couple of issues a year even on a 20 year old model like mine. If you think all is lost at 500,000km, just buy a new engine for like $1000 and sail away in your little Ship of Theseus that refuses to die. The purchase pri…

I really hope an electric car model will take up the mantle for reliability and repair ability. Toyota is lagging hard in the EV space. Maybe those Chevy Bolts will last a while? Or the Kia EVs? Probably the F150s, but I'd prefer a compact.

I have more hope for EV repairability than for e.g. iPhones. Notice that right-to-repair laws followed tractor owners, not iPhone owners. The farmers felt the pain first. It's simply more important for a vehicle, where replacing is not nearly as cheap.

You can already buy random EV parts online. As automakers make more models and source more common parts for their cars to do this competitively, this aftermarket gets better and more useful. A fairly promising thing is the apparent popularity of EV conversions and home-brew EVs, so perhaps there will be some competition for e.g supplying full-on computer control systems with some serious capabilities. There are also more modifications people will conceivably want to do on their cars. I know someone whose petrol ute has a fridge under the canopy, powered by a solar panel on the roof and an extra battery. Nobody is out there drilling a hole in their iPhone to add a headphone jack, because it would be really bad, but you can do all sorts to cars without ruining the whole experience. The complexity and variability of what people want their cars to do leads to modifications and that demand will have to be met somehow. It's also the kind of strange demand that cannot be met by the big automakers alone.

As for reliability, I hope the market will continue to speak pretty loudly with their wallets on the importance of that. People care about it now, I have no reason to believe they'll stop.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#106

Post by jzl »

technothrasher wrote: post #9
bluedino wrote: post #3

I'm still 6-8 months out for a Toyota van

I ordered a new Porsche SUV in the middle of December. It just got offloaded from the ship at port today, so I should finally have it in a couple weeks. But it will be missing some of the electronics, such as the electric steering wheel adjustment due to chip shortages. My poor sister-in-law also thought she ordered a Toyota in December. But as it turns out, the dealership just took advantage of her and told her they…

Doesn't help that a few thousand Porsches on the way to the US sunk to the bottom of the ocean a few months ago. https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a39139830/salvage-oper...

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#107

Post by hef19898 »

RyanShook wrote: post #2

I saw an article recently saying that dealerships and car makers want to keep inventories low because they like the post-covid margins they're experiencing. When I paid 5k over msrp a few months ago the salesperson claimed they wanted more inventory because salespeople were unable to hit the volume goals they have. Not sure who to believe but I'm sure the truth lies somewhere in between.

Not sure how car dealerships in the US work, but that is the general inventory management problem: sales what all of everything, finance wants nothing of everything, productions wants to keep utilization at 100% and Supply Chain needs to balance that. From experience, this works best when sales has no direct influence on inventory levels and forecast accuracy goals on top their other ones. That way you can let Supply Chain, through sales and ops planning, figure out how to meet both availability and inventory targets.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#108

Post by jiveturkey »

agensaequivocum wrote: post #68
CamperBob2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to do that. Many if not most automakers, both foreign and domestic, already accept custom orders through their dealers. You're not going to like the wait time, though.

I placed an order for a Sienna a couple of months ago. However, it's more of getting put in line for something similar that is allocated to the dealer. The more specific, the longer the wait is.

For Toyota, there are no custom orders. You wait until the dealer gets a specific allocation. I imagine that this is due to their precisely tuned JIT manufacturing?

For many other brands, your custom order goes to the factory when you make some small commitment.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#109

Post by adhesive_wombat »

bfdm wrote: post #79
agensaequivocum wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I placed an order for a Sienna a couple of months ago. However, it's more of getting put in line for something similar that is allocated to the dealer. The more specific, the longer the wait is.

But this doesn't make any sense, that's exactly the problem. If you wanted a particular configuration they should direct the plant to assemble that configuration just as soon as they've finished assembling any special configuration requests placed before yours.

Possibly they do configurations in phases, so the more unusual your request, the longer it will be before they're building a suitable batch.

Maybe they only do adaptive cruise models on Wednesday and wood trim on the third week of the month. Now to get both you have to wait a month and because the ship leaves in 2 weeks, now you have to wait for the next one.

Semiconductors are the same. Manufacturer lead times are, even in good times, long for many things because they don't hold stock to cover big orders. If you come along and order a million AD4242WTFBBQ-OMGXXX, one of dozens of variants of a chip, they don't have that boxed and ready. You'll have to wait until the fab is doing that variant again.

The problem now is that all the distributor stock that used to keep everyone going while the big orders were scheduled is gone, and the fabs are so slammed that the time to the next free slot is measured in years, not weeks. And that's if the fab is still making that jellybean part at all and hasn't switched to a higher-margin part.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#110

Post by batiudrami »

CameronNemo wrote: post #98
d110af5ccf wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no more paying comprehensive insurance Assuming you can afford to replace it on your own if you need to, this one really adds up.

When I removed comprehensive coverage, the lady from the insurance company audibly said "wow" before telling me my new yearly rate. It dropped quite a bit. Over 50% decrease IIRC.

In Australia I changed from comprehensive to third party property damage, fire and theft and my rate changed from $950 to $240/y. For a $5000 vehicle! (NB: first and third party medical insurance are covered by rego and Medicare).
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