Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 495 posts

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

#191

Post by matli »

tschwimmer wrote: post #148
emidln wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TPMS works by calculating the RPM of the wheel and knowing the tire size and vehicle speed. Most TPMS setups don't know the actual pressure, they infer it.

This is true of cheaper cars, like my Honda. German cars like Audis and Porsches have direct TPMS that can actually tell you the exact tire pressure.

Most Audis have indirect systems, but they have direct TPMS as an optional extra. At least that's the case on the European market, unsure about the US market. Some premium Audis also have loose wheel detection, which is based on a similar technology as the indirect TPMS.

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

#192

Post by jdasdf »

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…

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

There is no such thing as "price gouging".

It just so happens that at this moment the price of things is higher than it usually is due to increased demand and reduced supply.

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

#193

Post by pickle-wizard »

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…

Good news, you can buy this car today. It is called the Mitsubishi Mirage. Hardly anyone buys it because it is an absolutely dreadful car to drive.

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

#194

Post by thriftwy »

Ekaros wrote: post #162
thriftwy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if nobody did ssh+nfc keys yet. At least I could trust it.

SSH+NFC sound like horrible protocol choice for such token. Not that I would be against option to periodically rekey the whole system. Generate new pair of private keys and have the car and key swap them with my approval.

You don't need to ever rekey an SSH private-public key pair. Still, a single hands-free token can be taken by force or stolen.

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

#195

Post by pickle-wizard »

yardie wrote: post #93
caeril wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, lots of internet people who don't want to be tracked (license plate readers notwithstanding). But also plenty of IRL people complaining about how, for example, they miss their $10k pickup with no power anything that worked great for anytime they needed to haul material X from location M to N, but now you need to drop a minimum of $50k for a vehicle you might use once per weekend to haul gravel, insulation, ceme…

You can still get a stripped down, plain white F-150 for under $27k through fleet sales. But buyers don’t want that. They want the 4-door people hauler that happens to have a pick-up bed and leather seats. They’ll imagine the $10k from memories but forget the vinyl seats, no AC, and manual windows. But they won’t buy that one n

They are also thinking of that $10K in todays dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that $10K truck that could could buy back in the mid-80s costs the same as a new one today. You just get a heck of a lot more features.

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

#196

Post by Swenrekcah »

blevin wrote: post #178
the__alchemist wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negative. Like scalping everywhere, they're middlemen who contribute nothing to society, and make it more difficult for people who do.

Some have argued that scalpers, like other risk arbitrageurs, accelerate market price discovery. If you buy the argument that markets are net positive for society by relaying information about economic trade offs, scalpers aren’t necessarily bad even if they are indeed annoying to market participants by lifting the ask. Of course there are extreme conditions where we also might decide that using money as the universa…

This argument feels wrong to me. If there is a market for the chip, it will find a market price. If there isn’t there isn’t. If the market is in an equilibrium and the chip manufacturer makes some money on their chips, and the chip buyers make some money on their products, the a scalper coming in and sucking up all the profit isn’t doing anybody in the world any good except themselves.

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

#197

Post by forbiddenlake »

j-bos wrote: post #169
da_chicken wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "religious reasons" he's talking about are "zero inventory" or "JIT inventory" pioneered by Japanese auto makers in the 80s and 90s. By optimizing inventory management and understanding demand for your product, you can ensure you don't have excess inventory on-site (meaning you don't have money invested in product parts you can't sell and have to pay taxes on). It's the system that virtually every manufacturer (a…

My understanding is that JIT, as performed by Toyota, takes into account the differences in difficulty of sourcing different inventories. If this is true, one would expect that Toyota faced shortages later than other manufacturers. Does anyone have a source proving or disproving this?

Yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28232469

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

#198

Post by zamadatix »

jdasdf wrote: post #192
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…

> One important part of the chip shortage is the massive amount of price gouging going on. There is no such thing as "price gouging". It just so happens that at this moment the price of things is higher than it usually is due to increased demand and reduced supply.

Price gouging is a real thing and "the price of things is higher than it usually is due to increased demand and reduced supply" is actually part of it's definition. I.e. price gouging isn't a replacement for the supply/demand model rather a description in certain extreme cases of said model, often regulated cases depending on the jurisdiction.

Traditionally it referred to traditional survival items though, not just any item.

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

#199

Post by Ekaros »

thriftwy wrote: post #194
Ekaros wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SSH+NFC sound like horrible protocol choice for such token. Not that I would be against option to periodically rekey the whole system. Generate new pair of private keys and have the car and key swap them with my approval.

You don't need to ever rekey an SSH private-public key pair. Still, a single hands-free token can be taken by force or stolen.

So can car key... I don't really have a car and probably never will were I truly worried that it was essentially single factor authentication.

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

#200

Post by dropofwill »

LawnGnome wrote: post #58
asdff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone driving a car thats older than 15 years old is already driving the car that OP is describing.

Sure, but do they actually want that car, or is that just what they have and can afford?

I personally have no interest in any upgrades over my 20 year old car. Maybe electric or no car at all if my living situation changed to support it. Obviously my hand will be forced soon enough as it slowly degrades.
Post reply on HN