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Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

reuters.com

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Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#111

Post by baybal2 »

redisman wrote: post #98
baybal2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200mm tapeouts have briefly became more profitable than leading edge ones on the wave of panic buying. On my side, I lost a lot of firmware devs to poaching by companies migrating between microchip brands, and ready to pay just anything, to the point of me myself being tempted.

Heck, why not? It’s a market economy and we are a commodity. Why resist your price going up?

It's an ultimate irony to see that 200mm fabs in the West were closed one after another for "low profitability" just to see them missing out on this money volcano

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#112

Post by seszett »

gklwand wrote: post #23

"Some 1,300 workers employed at the plant will be temporarily laid off, Opel said, with a separate plant in France picking up some of the production." Perhaps a very convenient chip shortage? Anyhow, why not build a car without electronics, gps, g4, microphones, voice control, tracking and screens. Because that is exactly what I want.

> why not build a car without electronics, gps, g4, microphones, voice control, tracking and screens. Because that is exactly what I want.

That sounds like what Dacia does.

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#113

Post by intricatedetail »

gklwand wrote: post #23

"Some 1,300 workers employed at the plant will be temporarily laid off, Opel said, with a separate plant in France picking up some of the production." Perhaps a very convenient chip shortage? Anyhow, why not build a car without electronics, gps, g4, microphones, voice control, tracking and screens. Because that is exactly what I want.

There are already bills in the pipeline to require all cars to have GPS in the EU (speed limiters) and more privacy violating stuff. Governments want to know of every aspect of your life, so any privacy conscious device will not be viable.

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#114

Post by kbaker »

One important part of the chip shortage is the massive amount of price gouging going on.

Every IC is being bought up by new 3rd party distributors to scalp to desperate electronics manufacturers.

Take a look at this chip we are just now crossing as an example, click on 'Non-authorized stocking distributors':

https://octopart.com/tps2052bdgnr-texas+instruments-699312?r...

Win Source has a bunch, but you will pay 6x the cost. We have been quoted even 100x the list price for some ICs on our boards.

Luckily as a small company we are nimble and can mostly cross to similar components, and have been for months now, but a whole board assembly run can be stopped with a single component being impossible to find out of hundreds on the BOM.

Having scalpers in the mix raising the price for all components worries me that the chip shortage might not end for many years, as they can self-fund by raising their prices to stock up on new supply. Not to mention the higher number of random failures as counterfeits easily find their way into the supply chain without 'authorized' distributors.

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#115

Post by Gravityloss »

hristov wrote: post #71
caeril wrote: post #21

What I'll never understand is why carmakers don't take advantage of this situation and address a market that's been literally BEGGING for decades for a new product: A simple, basic car, with the ONLY electronic control being for: - Valve timing - Fuel injection - Oxygen and throttle - Emissions There's a market for budget and privacy oriented customers that all carmakers seem to have ignored for two decades now. Give…

First of all this "simple" car may end up being more expensive. Doing a lot of the things the old mechanical way requires a lot of labor and labor is expensive nowadays. Having to use turning wires and vacuum tubes for instrument clusters, and a bunch of pull wires for controls... Not only would that be expensive it would require skills and equipment long lost today. Oh and the wind shield wipers -- it is possible to…

So true. Computing is very cheap nowadays. It is also very reliable.

If you watch Sandy Munro's videos, he mentions often how his visits with Chinese car manufacturers go, when they discuss architecture options. Customers hold up a cell phone and ask "How can we make it more like this?". The cell phone got rid of separate components a long time ago. Everything's on one PCB, plus the display. And many things that used to be on the PCB but consisted of many chips, are now integrated to a single chip. The car consisting of a lot of OEM boxes connected with wires seems so outdated.

And each box having a separate computer makes it in essence stranded. Instead, if the control is centralized, then it's possible to take the complexity to software and keep managing it much better, features are easier to develop and can be sent to existing cars over the air etc.

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#116

Post by AnimalMuppet »

baybal2 wrote: post #66

The aspect of the problem not talked about is that a lot of automotive chips are really, really old. And they are old, because of many certification requirements set partially by the industry, and a few odd governments. In reality, most of them are both less reliable, and harder to work with in comparison to open market parts. The only two things I seen chips with micron scale nodes used in my life were: air conditio…

Cars are a really noisy electrical environment. Can you replace that micron-scale chip with a 7 nm chip and have it function reliably for two decades in that environment?

I mean, worst case, when you let go of the starter motor, it creates a huge back EMF. Imagine your chip finding its +5 input suddenly 12 volts below ground for a significant fraction of a second. (Now, it shouldn't be that bad any more. That was back in the bad old days, when chips were just starting to be added to cars. Shielding should be a mostly-solved problem these days. But is it solved well enough for your 7 nm chip, or just well enough for the micron-scale chips? It's something you have to really carefully look at before you move to smaller processes.)

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#117

Post by aazaa »

> Stellantis has halted production at other plants, including in Europe and Canada, forecasting that it would make 1.4 million fewer vehicles this year due to the chip shortage.

For perspective:

> Combined sales of FCA and PSA totaled 6,206,000 units in 2020, down by 22% compared to 2019 figures. When the two companies announced their decision to merge, they became the world’s 4th largest automaker by sales volume. It was only outsold by Volkswagen Group, Toyota and Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance. With 7,907,000 vehicles sold in 2019, FCA-PSA (which was not called Stellantis by then), was bigger than GM and Hyundai-Kia. One year later, these two outperformed Stellantis.

https://fiatgroupworld.com/2021/02/14/stellantis-sold-6-2-mi...

If I'm reading this right, pre-pandemic sales were ~8 million. So a cut 1.4 million due to chip shortages represents an 18% drop. But compared to 2020, the drop is 23%.

That's disastrous hit for any company to withstand.

I'm curious how much of this is actually due to chip supply vs. how much could be due to other factors, but blamed on chip supply.

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#118

Post by _moof »

panax wrote: post #75
blfr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't like how overcomplicated many products are becoming but even then wouldn't buy a car without at least AC and Bluetooth.

I won't buy a car if it has bluetooth or cellular connectivity, but that is getting harder to find. I want that shit air-gapped. Someday I might have to just rip out the media head and telematics unit after buying it if I can't find one anymore.

I'd describe myself as having above-average privacy anxiety but I have to ask, what's the threat model here? I'm way more concerned about ALPRs than I am about Bluetooth or a data connection.

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#119

Post by AnimalMuppet »

baybal2 wrote: post #10
slownews45 wrote: post #7

Man - the magnitude / impact of these chips shortages on autos in particular is crazy. Regardless of Opel popularity, in the US the F-150 was a best selling vehicle and massive cash cow and they had unfinished vehicles sitting out. These chips have GOT to be a relatively low margin / somewhat lower cost item (ie, feature size can be large). What a miss not to have more coverage for them.

200mm tapeouts have briefly became more profitable than leading edge ones on the wave of panic buying. On my side, I lost a lot of firmware devs to poaching by companies migrating between microchip brands, and ready to pay just anything, to the point of me myself being tempted.

Mind telling us whether you're hiring? And, mind pointing us to some contacts where your people are going?

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#120

Post by baybal2 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #116
baybal2 wrote: post #66

The aspect of the problem not talked about is that a lot of automotive chips are really, really old. And they are old, because of many certification requirements set partially by the industry, and a few odd governments. In reality, most of them are both less reliable, and harder to work with in comparison to open market parts. The only two things I seen chips with micron scale nodes used in my life were: air conditio…

Cars are a really noisy electrical environment. Can you replace that micron-scale chip with a 7 nm chip and have it function reliably for two decades in that environment? I mean, worst case, when you let go of the starter motor, it creates a huge back EMF. Imagine your chip finding its +5 input suddenly 12 volts below ground for a significant fraction of a second. (Now, it shouldn't be that bad any more. That was bac…

> Cars are a really noisy electrical environment. Can you replace that micron-scale chip with a 7 nm chip and have it function reliably for two decades in that environment?

For as long as you talk about digital side, you can. Your smartphone is a way more noisy electrical environment than your car.

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