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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

#431

Post by roenxi »

Retric wrote: post #427
roenxi wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That needs to be sourced from somewhere; the classic understanding of airlines is they usually overbook [0] and rely on people not turning up. In fact, the whole "lets not sell our inventory, we'll make higher profits!" idea here is suspect. The idea that having unsold inventory in the model is a good idea is just false; having inventory left over is always undesirable. If it was sold at the last minute then they wou…

It isn’t a question of what happens on specific flights, it’s a question of what happens generally. Global load factors are ~85% which is a long way from constantly overbooked. Pre pandemic to get a normal picture: https://www.airlineratings.com/news/packed-planes-new-normal... Low cost US carriers have a load factor of 90% that’s a trade off between fixed aircraft size and variable demand. However, US carriers only…

I'm guessing that is a statistical artefact. They'd be running routes that are completely packed in one direction and not so full in the other due to seasonal effects or due to day/night cycles. So even if they were trying to overbook they'd still have quite empty planes much of the time.

85% capacity use of an asset is really quite high. If they managed to achieve mid-high 90s that would be startling given how good humans are at missing flights and changing plans.

To repeat myself, if the plan is to leave your capital unutilised for 15% of the time, on purpose, when there is an alternative, then the planner is a lousy capitalist and doomed to soon be a broke one.

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

#432

Post by hef19898 »

avianlyric wrote: post #405
ekianjo wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other thing NVidia could do is keep all their GPUs for themselves and mine crypto. Who says they are not already doing that in some capacity?

That sounds like a lot of work, and a PR nightmare if the public ever found out. Nvidia is already a money printing machine, and their margins are growing. I doubt it’s worth the time investment and risk exposure to the crypto markets for Nvidia. Better off using that time a money inventing better money printers.

Why would you start digging for gold if you are already becoming rich producing and selling the shovels?

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

#433

Post by Retric »

roenxi wrote: post #431
Retric wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t a question of what happens on specific flights, it’s a question of what happens generally. Global load factors are ~85% which is a long way from constantly overbooked. Pre pandemic to get a normal picture: https://www.airlineratings.com/news/packed-planes-new-normal... Low cost US carriers have a load factor of 90% that’s a trade off between fixed aircraft size and variable demand. However, US carriers only…

I'm guessing that is a statistical artefact. They'd be running routes that are completely packed in one direction and not so full in the other due to seasonal effects or due to day/night cycles. So even if they were trying to overbook they'd still have quite empty planes much of the time. 85% capacity use of an asset is really quite high. If they managed to achieve mid-high 90s that would be startling given how good…

> I'm guessing that is a statistical artifact.

No, it’s a difference in business models. Low cost carriers approach things very differently. https://youtu.be/1-uNMj57Y4c

It’s not that their wasting this 15% of their unused seats airlines are simply more profitable with this pricing model.

“While you might expect the airlines to lower their prices a few days before the departure day to occupy the last seats, the opposite is true: Selling 20% of the remaining seats for $1,500 is more profitable than selling half of them for the regular fare of $550.” https://flightfox.com/tradecraft/how-do-airlines-set-prices

Further that’s a statistical average, they might not have any last minute travelers on flight X or they might sell out flight Y 1 hour before departure. As airlines can’t both raise and lower prices at the last minute they A reserve seats for the possibility and B frequency lose the gamble.

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

#434

Post by matkoniecz »

drdeca wrote: post #313
TeMPOraL wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, this makes sense in a hypothetical world of perfect theoretical models (you may recognize this world as being the one inhabited by frictionless, perfectly spherical cows). In this world, scalpers cause the market to price in "stickiness" - the more critical an item is to the buyer, the more they'll be willing to pay - so the supply ultimately gets allocated to the most desperate of buyers, for the p…

It seems to me like most of the (alleged) benefits of scalpers would be equally well achieved by selling (some fraction of) the items in auctions, instead of just picking a price. However, my impression is that consumers would view this in a negative light, and that the harms to the seller’s reputation would be enough to outweigh the initially increased income. This seems to be the source of the inefficiencies that s…

Maybe producer can sell some part on auction and donate extra income to some charity?

At least this way parasitic scalpers would not benefit.

(this assumes that charity would be some actual charity, not just existing to transfer money to family of CEO or something similar)

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

#435

Post by ckuehne »

blowski wrote: post #411
rjzzleep wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such an idiotic statement. When every other country was suffering under scalpers buying up mask supplies at the beginning of the pandemic Taiwan, South Korea and some other countries actively took a hand in mask distribution. The result: - cheaper access to masks for the general population - no mask shortages in critical infrastructure such as hospitals or other health care institutions - general better handling and…

Exactly there’s a “guilty by association” fallacy here. 1. You want the government to control production of some resources. 2. Stalin controlled production of some resources 3. Stalin killed millions of people 4. Therefore, you want to kill millions of people

No, there is only "knowing that communist central planning always ends up in shortages".

See here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19970544 for an example that illustrates the point nicely.

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

#436

Post by roenxi »

Retric wrote: post #433
roenxi wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing that is a statistical artefact. They'd be running routes that are completely packed in one direction and not so full in the other due to seasonal effects or due to day/night cycles. So even if they were trying to overbook they'd still have quite empty planes much of the time. 85% capacity use of an asset is really quite high. If they managed to achieve mid-high 90s that would be startling given how good…

> I'm guessing that is a statistical artifact. No, it’s a difference in business models. Low cost carriers approach things very differently. https://youtu.be/1-uNMj57Y4c It’s not that their wasting this 15% of their unused seats airlines are simply more profitable with this pricing model. “While you might expect the airlines to lower their prices a few days before the departure day to occupy the last seats, the oppos…

Well, sure, but that is assuming that the market is exactly 85 people. If we hold the number of people fixed and it is impossible to sell all of the inventory then holding back inventory is much more effective - because we have assumed it is impossible to sell.

The hypothetical in that article would make more money if they sold 80 seats at $495, 15 seats at 900 and then 5 at $1500 (that makes $60,600). There are strong incentives here to fill the seats.

And they are doing the scalpers trick where someone desperate to get on the flight can. As opposed to when the good would be overbought and someone willing to pay $1,500 has to start paying off passengers for their booking instead of giving more money to the people who put planes in the sky.

Plus, if we're both running this strategy, I have huge incentives to offer $1,495 seats to steal your high paying customers off you. It just doesn't work as a strategy unless it is already impossible to fill the plane - which is quite likely the case.

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

#437

Post by Lev1a »

xyzzyz wrote: post #380
drdeca wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me like most of the (alleged) benefits of scalpers would be equally well achieved by selling (some fraction of) the items in auctions, instead of just picking a price. However, my impression is that consumers would view this in a negative light, and that the harms to the seller’s reputation would be enough to outweigh the initially increased income. This seems to be the source of the inefficiencies that s…

This is exactly how concert ticket scalpers work. Bands/producers covertly but with full awareness sell most of the ticket to scalpers, which outsources the reputation hit.

My mother told me about some new anti-scalper scheme she encountered recently when she was looking at ordering concert tickets for herself and my father. It went something like this:

- basket size limited to IIRC a maximum of five tickets for the same concert,

- name of the buyer is linked to (idk, maybe even printed on) the tickets AND

- the named buyer would have to be there with the group to enter the venue.

I think this would probably be pretty effective in countering that bottom-feeding scum called scalper.

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

#438

Post by Lev1a »

medvezhenok wrote: post #237
bluecalm wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they provide value. They make it possible for people/entities who needs things the most to actually get them instead of those who happen to be first in line or in lucky position to get access to supply.

> Well, they provide value. They make it possible for people/entities who needs things the most to actually get them instead of those who happen to be first in line or in lucky position to get access to supply. True - they also take on some risk of being stuck with inventory that they can't resell at a profit (if prices drop between when they buy and sell). Ethically scalping feels wrong, but I think ethics aside, sc…

> Ethically scalping feels wrong, but I think ethics aside, scalping does provide a service to the market.

Yeah fuck ethics, there's profit to be made.

/s

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

#439

Post by Consultant32452 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #231
hutrdvnj wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The way I see it, this makes sense in a hypothetical world of perfect theoretical models (you may recognize this world as being the one inhabited by frictionless, perfectly spherical cows). In this world, scalpers cause the market to price in "stickiness" - the more critical an item is to the buyer, the more they'll be willing to pay - so the supply ultimately gets allocated to the most desperate of buyers, for the p…

"No offense, but it sounds like some commie gobbledygook to me." ~Norm Macdonald

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

#440

Post by bambax »

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…

> But most importantly, it wouldn't sell.

You don't know that. I'm pretty sure there is a market for simple cars that don't tell you what to do, don't report you to the authorities, don't shut down unexpectedly because you didn't follow the manufacturer's maintenance schedule, etc.

> How about even getting into the car without a radio key fob. I very much doubt the majority of people will even know how to lock or unlock their rear doors without a central lock/unlock key. They will probably just leave their car unlocked.

I can't tell if this is satire or not, but people who can't open a door with a key and a handle maybe shouldn't be allowed to drive.

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