I totally understand the necessity. But along with state mandated insurance minimums the corporation will always take advantage. As much as we like to regulate and say how that protects the consumer, I don’t see much protection besides consumers protecting themselves from predators. Double edged sword. This is high school level finance/economics that is never taught in public education. There’s a reason for that…
It always comes down to a fool and his money are easily parted…
I’m digressing into free markets of which we’re certainly not.
This is interesting. Wasn’t aware but also not surprised.
"Moore’s law of ever-increasing miniaturization seemingly never reached the automotive industry. Dozens of chips found in everything from electronic brake systems to airbag control units tend to rely on obsolete technology often well over a decade old. These employ comparatively simple transistors that can be anywhere from 45 nanometers to as much as 90 nanometers in size, far too large—and too primitive—to be suitable for today’s smartphones.
When the pandemic hit, replacement demand for big-ticket items like new cars was pushed back while sales of all kinds of home devices soared. When the car market roared back months later, chipmakers had already reallocated their capacity."
The last bit (capacity reallocation) has been in nearly every chip shortage story. The former isn’t really news either. Not everything needs to be miniturized to the smallest process, but everything does need better simplifications/integration.
Cell phones are a high-end dinner salad. Cars are the salad bar at Ruby Tuesday.
I think the issue is a lot of the semi fabs are moving more towards the higher end chips. The semi industry is moving much faster than the tech in cars.
Browsing car deals used to be so much fun… even if I wasn’t in the market for a new vehicle. Sometimes I didn’t know I was in the market until I happened upon an irresistible deal!
I dunno, ask emperor empty promises. I’m sure in his head an army of Tesla bots operated by the same software as FSD and connected by neurallink are building chips already.
“I think we will have good capacity for providing chips by next year”
This isn’t really that aggressive of a time frame. I also think we will have a good chip supply at some point in 2022. The problem is even after supply returns it will take another six months to a year to restore something resembling normal inventory levels. So that’s not a return to normal until likely early-mid 2023.
