Shortages Affecting Auto Production: Semiconductor, foam, etc

“What?! Most manufacturers buy their ABS microcontroller from the same company? Why is that? They sell one that works and has passed all the regulatory hurdles.”

I applaud the effort, I even know the person to lead it. The answers will not be shocking enough for a Buzzfeed article.

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How about jalopnik?

Remind me which media graveyard owns them currently? Verizon? Yahoo?

I give their headline writers credit: they get paid by the preposition, double for split infinitives.

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Gizmodo Media.

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$60,000 MSRP with 10K rebates. :rofl:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/gm-extending-blazer-production-halt-mexico-2021-09-30/

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GM, the largest U.S. automaker, said it will extend by two weeks a halt to Chevrolet Blazer sport utility vehicle production at its Ramos plant in Mexico because of the ongoing chips shortage as it resumes production at other North American plants.

Can only mean good things for resale value of my Blazer! Woohoo!

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Car companies “immediately pointed the finger at TSMC” for the shortage, TSMC chairman Mark Liu tells TIME in an exclusive interview. “But I told them, ‘You are my customer’s customer’s customer. How could I [prioritize others] and not give you chips?’”

best quote in the article.

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I might be a luddite still listen to radio, but no satellite radio is a deal breaker for me.
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I would love for that option to remain past shortages. I don’t remember when was the last time I took my radio from bluetooth or android auto. I always assumed that Sirius was paying manufacturers to be included by default.

Can’t you stream Sirius the same way from the phone and save 350?

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Isn’t it crazy to see their internal valuation of these components? Like, I would always take the $350 and get rid of satellite radio. And if I could save even $1, I would tell them not to bother with gesture control!

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The BMW SiriusXM is free for one year and after that if you ask for renewal you can get it for $5 a month usually. So it really doesn’t cost $350, I would not have a 60K build that doesn’t have it, but it’s just me. I’m curious since this is the first time I see Sat radio being impacted.

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Is that model dependent? I don’t think mine was a year. On the other hand I don’t care if they would have paid me $5 a month, I just have zero use for it and it’s just a thing that exists in a car because there was no option to get rid of it.

That thing is hilarious especially if you have a wife who gestures a lot when she talks. I turned gesture control off because she would trigger random things :slight_smile:

Overall my ideal music system in the car boils down to connect to bt, volume control, track control. With the phone setup to open certain things as soon as car’s bt is detected.

You can stream Sirius from the phone, after paying for it, as long as you have reception. XM is a fantastic option if you drive in areas with poor reception.

I guess it’s situational then. I have never been in a situation where my phone went to unusable, but even if it would I have enough music cached on the phone to last me for a bit. I’m also not a big fan of linear music presentation and have such a “all over the place” taste in music that there is not a single “station” that works for me.

For years, my commute took me through some mountainy areas outside LA where both cell reception and standard radio reception were very spotty. Being able to keep music going was great. Same with on long drives away from population centers.

Yah, I could have downloaded a bunch of music, but having variety was nice.

I get the appeal, I just wish there was an option to not have it, that’s all. If the question is have XM in the car or get $350 discount, I’ll take a discount. I’m sure there are enough people in both camps.

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No doubt it isn’t for everyone, but it does have its use cases.

It’s deleted on a X3M40i build, 3 series build doesn’t have this issue, not sure if they can retroactively put it back. I drove south from the Bay Area to send my daughter to college two weeks ago, I was glad that I have satellite radio otherwise I have to get a 10 disc CD changer lol.

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