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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

#131

Post by 88840-8855 »

oblio wrote: post #121
88840-8855 wrote: post #17

Edit: Too many downvotes for my view that this Opel case is yet another symptom of the wrong handling of the panedmic by any governments, leading to inflation and supply chain disruptions. If opinions are downvoted then I do not need to participate.

First of all, your original comment was this: > I try to simplify the root cause like this: > - people kept getting money while not working > - those people did not work, hence, no goods were produced > Same amount of money without the goods in the market. Inflation and good shortages. I believe that those government helicopter money was a huge mistake. It would have been better to lay off people; many have money sav…

I think you are wrong.

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

#132

Post by ihalip »

usmannk wrote: post #37
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…

I can't imagine anyone would want the car you described, for market-sized values of "anyone"

The latest Dacia Sandero is selling better than all other models in its class for a few months now - even if it's basically a revamped last-gen Renault Clio with even lower quality interior and safety features. Some people prefer a basic, cheaper car.

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

#133

Post by xnyan »

baybal2 wrote: post #120
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Your smartphone is a way more noisy electrical environment than your car.

Cellphones are are certainly tricky, but in a different way than cars. In my experience with EMF measurement and EMI compliance at Underwriters Labs, cars are uniquely challenging due to the relatively strong EMF generation from the huge number of motors, solenoids, coils other magnetic bits banging around and interacting with each other in hard-to-predict ways.

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

#134

Post by Noted »

baybal2 wrote: post #120
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think smartphones are expected to work on the same timescale that a car should.

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

#136

Post by minhazm »

Tesla has done a decent job of mitigating some of the chip shortages since they are so vertically integrated. Though obviously Tesla produces way less cars than Toyota/Honda/VW. But other manufacturers simply can't do this even if they wanted to since they outsource most of this stuff.

> “We were able to substitute alternative chips, and then write the firmware in a matter of weeks,” Musk said. “It’s not just a matter of swapping out a chip; you also have to rewrite the software.”

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22595060/tesla-chip-short...

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

#137

Post by hutrdvnj »

kbaker wrote: post #114

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 th…

Scalpers are not the problem as they seem, they are like market makers for stock exchanges. They buy low and sell high, always. The factory could tell you that they're currently out of stock for the next few months, but a scalper will never be out of stock, because their prices rises so high that only very few desperate companies would buy. The point is, it's better to have the option to buy something at a high price, than to have no option to buy at all.

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

#138

Post by Hamuko »

paganel wrote: post #52
ohmaigad wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back up cameras are not mandatory until May 2022 in the EU.

We're already only a few months away from 2022, most (if not all) carmakers present on the EU market have included back-up cameras in their vehicles. I know that my brother's Dacia Logan built in 2019 already had one.

Backup cameras have been an optional extra for a long time sure, but I don't think I'm aware of any car that actually comes standard with one. Well, maybe a Mercedes-Benz S-Class. I do have a backup camera in my 10-year-old Benz, but I imagine that the original owner paid a four-digit amount of euros for it back in the day.

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

#139

Post by baybal2 »

xnyan wrote: post #133
baybal2 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>Your smartphone is a way more noisy electrical environment than your car. Cellphones are are certainly tricky, but in a different way than cars. In my experience with EMF measurement and EMI compliance at Underwriters Labs, cars are uniquely challenging due to the relatively strong EMF generation from the huge number of motors, solenoids, coils other magnetic bits banging around and interacting with each other in ha…

High voltage CMOS is certainly needed there of course, but you don't put you logic chip on the same die as a motor inverter.

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

#140

Post by throwaway9870 »

baybal2 wrote: post #120
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

First, there is no such thing as digital. It is just an abstraction to facilitate our understanding and design of circuits. Any number of issues can cause that abstraction to fail, even deep within a modern chip, let alone at the board level. On-chip cross talk, RC drop, and ground bounce are simple analog issues that have to be contended with on digital designs. Every chip has a power supply and the smaller geometry chips have less tolerance to supply spikes. Same with I/O including voltage range tolerances and ESD protection. All that gets harder in smaller geometries. Also factor in circuit lifetimes (including digital). Due to a variety of mechanisms, small geometry chips just are not as reliable and some of these mechanisms are very hard to accelerate so qualification is a nightmare.

A smart phone is not a "way more noisy" environment than a car. It has different issues, and frankly a far more constrained and predictable environment. A load dump event in a car can take the 12V supply over 100V. I have never heard of that in cell phone. Long wiring harnesses are a nightmare and require careful design. It is hard to compare a cell phone and car without a clear definition of "noisy", but as someone who has designed systems similar to both, I think the car is a harder set of problems. Just not as constrained noise sources or components.

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