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Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

bloomberg.com

211–220 of 261 posts

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#211
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could sell the car yourself, and get financing from a bank. Then its only price (fixed), and addons.

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.

The automaker financing is often subsidies. In the past you could choose a rebate or their low interest financing, if you ran the math the rebate was basically the difference between the interest rate they offer and what a little more than what a fair market value interest rate would be. I seems the rebate option as disappeared though, so financing is probably your only option to get these rates.

Of course in the end if you have options you need to run your own numbers. Things change far too often to give general advice.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#212

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.

As a brit where at least 3rd party insurance is a legal requirement,I consider that everyone should be fully comp. It's not just your car you're damaging, it's likely another car and potentially legal fees and loss of earnings. Even if insurance went optional I'd still go fully comp, as the cost of a new car is not what I need if I'm already financially struggling due to injury

In the US, auto insurance policies are split into 3 buckets: collision, comprehensive and liability. Comprehensive kicks in for events which are “not collisions,” so tree falling on the car, theft, etc.

You are required to have liability and collision coverage in most states, but comprehensive is optional. People often drop it from their policies to save on the premium. I have tried doing that on one of our vehicles over the years but have barely realized any savings so I’ve ended up keeping it on the policy. Seems like others have fared better.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#213
post #203

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That doesn't show you are getting vastly improved crash safety. Only looking at injury data in the real world would show that. It's my understanding new cars are not significantly safer than cars from 10 years ago.

I haven't found the safety data, but was very surprised when my new car was way cheaper to insure than my old one. I assume the insurance companies have the data. This may not be safer as in better crash resilience, but safer as in you have a backup camera, and side sensors for changing lanes.

Not entirely surprising - the biggest change in car technology over the past few years has been the inclusion of driver assistance features and liability is the most expensive component of auto insurance.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#214

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Ford leadership seems to really want to move to the Tesla preorder model, but changing this will be extremely difficult. This entrenched way of doing business may start seriously hurting their bottom line if Tesla and others can scale the direct to consumer model.

> Ford leadership seems to really want to move to the Tesla preorder model It may not be so much that they want to, but it is apparent that Ford is struggling to figure out how the dealership fits in an EV world, where your customers aren't constantly funnelling in for oil changes. The ICE model allows the dealership to make a sizeable portion of their income from the attached repair shop, but much of that shop work…

Oil changes are a good source of income, but there is a lot of other service. Oil changes are nice to get people into the dealer, but many people go elsewhere for them. My last new car was recalled a few times, for things unrelated to the engine. An EV still has a suspension system, tires, steering, brakes, and thousands of other components that can have recalls, break, or otherwise need work.

There is a bit less maintenance without an ICE, but not much.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#215
post #202

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No, the data shows that Tesla vehicles generally have terrible reliability. A Toyota Prius hybrid is far more mechanically complex than any Tesla EV, yet the Prius is far more reliable on average. http://www.truedelta.com/car-reliability But Tesla still sells well for other reasons, so apparently they don't have to care about product quality.

I'm having a hard time navigating that site and getting any data out of it. Is it considered a reliable source of information? It seems to only have data for the first generation Model 3 from 2018. They also seems to count stuff like replacement of the 12v battery. The writeups of high mileage Tesla's that I have read have not mentioned very many repairs - and that seems to be the general consensus on the owner's for…

Consumer Reports has more recent data. Tesla is next to last. The potential for EV reliability is there, but Tesla has missed it with incompetent engineering and sloppy assembly.

https://www.statista.com/chart/23586/average-reliability-sco...

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#216
post #85
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In future American OEMs may move to a more European model where vehicles are built to specific customer order. This takes on the order of two months at the moment for many legacy reasons, but there is no need for it to actually take this long. You've been able to do this in the US forever; you just might have needed to pay closer to (or even at) sticker (now I'm sure it's higher than sticker).

I tried to do it with Toyota and got absolutely nowhere. I talked to dealer after dealer, and they all told me that they couldn't customize a vehicle order. I also couldn't do it on Toyota.com - after I configured a vehicle, all it did was refer me to a dealer who told me that they can't customize anything.

That is odd because Japanese dealerships carry very little inventory and make to order.

You go to the dealer and test drive, sit down and go over packages and finance then a couple weeks later your car shows up and they either deliver it to your house or you go and pickup.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#217

The ripple effects from the chip shortage will be felt for years … nearly all new cars are already “spoken for” and consumers will still be paying MSRP & MSRP+ for 12-18 months. What happens to used car prices over the coming 2-3 years will be fascinating. So many people will be underwater on their car loans.

> So many people will be underwater on their car loans. Can you clarify what you mean? A car is a rapidly depreciating asset; being underwater is the norm . It's only been during the pandemic that used vehicle prices have outstripped loan values.

A lot of folks bought used cars at ridiculously high prices (over original MSRP when sold new in some cases). Banks approved them for those loans, and when the market corrects and used values come back in line (ie stop appreciating and depreciate again) those folks will be in severe negative equity positions.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#218

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.

> 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. Would you have invested that money in something that is currently growing at least as fast as inflation?

Yeah, I have about the same invested in I-bonds at the moment as I have outstanding on my car note.

But either way, the rate on the car note is lower than inflation, so I'd be ahead just by spending the cash on something else.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A car is an appliance. Why does it have to be fun? It's a moving chair that gets me from A to B

A very utilitarian view. People aren’t all beings of pure logic, though. Some people have fun in their cars and use them for purposes other than pure transportation.

They do indeed, but that doesn't mean it has to be fun for everyone. Some people enjoy cooking, but that doesn't mean everyone has to make every meal into a banquet.

Re: Carmakers feel chip crisis easing

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We design embedded too and I'm with you. My good friend and associate is one of the world's foremost aftermarket component traders. European, but based in Shenzhen. Same industry for 30 years. Clients include everyone who's anyone. When he stops telling me about record monthly profits after drinking, I'll believe it's over. Until then, no. FWIW, the beer-brag-barometer-index (BBBI) has been tracking solidly upward si…

I don’t know if it happened for sure but I’ve been waiting for this component for a few weeks and it finally showed up on Texas Instruments website with 300,000 in stock. A day later it was out of stock. I then checked out Octopart and findchips and looked at the 3rd party resellers and I’m guessing they might have gobbled it up as I’ve read in other threads (the 3rd party resellers on Octopart showed like 10-40k in…

So the implication is that some resellers buy up gigantic amounts of components, to take advantage of the massive markups on them that people are prepared to pay right now. Course, if the price/supply on them drops to normal levels they're looking at an instant disaster, and will have to offload them at severe markdowns.

Starting to understand why they say the IC market is cyclical, with wild swings between oversupply and undersupply.

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