Are chips coming available?

lenr wrote:
Ford and Toyota in particular were also hit by a fire at the chip factory that they depended on (Japan I think). That factory did come back on line this last summer ...

I think it was a sub-supplier but the same results.

If you want to be "worry wart", none of the big chip manufacturers make their own silicon ! Also, their is only one company in the world that makes the "cutting edge" equipment to actually manufacture the smallest chips (currently 5nm, but 3nm is just around the corner).

Ford and Toyota in particular were also hit by a fire at the chip factory that they depended on (Japan I think). That factory did come back on line this last summer, but the sales backlog will take a while to work out. The whole "just in time" auto assembly business is based on parts constantly arriving on time. Ya, it's inexpensive. Ford revenues are only down 5%--amazing. Remember GM's Saturn startup? The original concept was that customers would go into the dealer and order the exact car that they wanted receiving it a few weeks later. Well, that's now how Ford Super Duty purchasing works, except that it's more than a few weeks.

What few people know is the fact that Ford DID try to design their own chips but could not get any of the major "fabs" to play along !

Ford Microelectronics was founded in 1982, while Ford still owned Ford Aerospace (a minor defense/weapons contractor) and long before they spun off Visteon. They closed shop in 1999.

The only thing that they had a hand in designing was the EEC-V chip (aka 8065). The EEC-IV chip (8061) was designed and fabbed by Intel. The commercialized version of this chip was the 8096.

I was in the industry about 20 years ago. While things are getting a little bit better all of the new factories will not be online until 2023 and not up to full capacity until 2024.

No chip shortage down here. Lays, Wise , Cape Cod, I can buy them all!

Merry Christmas, peace on RV.NET....maybe? :B

Yosemite Sam1 wrote:

ACZL wrote:
DW has said for quite sometime as to why we can't maker things here. Local Freighliner dealer parts guy told me a couple weeks ago that he had to tell a customer w/ a brand new 6 wheeler box truck w/ 8K miles that he has to wait some 20+ weeks for some module.

Tell her, cost my dear, cost.

And that's the reason for your addiction to Walmart and Costco stuff buying things you don't need, to impress the people you don't know and only for it to end up in extra storage we have to rent then forget that we already have it... then go back to that same cycle, again and again.

But don't tell her to stop as we will go on recession if she does. And China too and the rest of the world.

Funny coming from someone wanting a Cybertruck, good for nothing but impressing neighbors when the local powergrid fails again.

MFL wrote:
Hey Bob, hope they gave him a loaner! Kinda hard to do without a work truck for that long, or have to rent.

Jerry

Nope, no loaners available. He is trying to operate out of his wifes SUV...

way2roll wrote:
I read that Ford has invested to build/partner it's own Chips. Can't imagine why it took this long. A major no no in manufacturing is not having redundancy for parts supply. Lack of Chips has crippled the entire auto industry and it took 2 years for them to start finding alternative sources or making them themselves? Bizarre.

I am not sure it is quite that simple. The companies that design these integrated circuits (ICs, aka 'chips') have spent decades refining their design and IP. Similarly the foundries that make these have also spent decades dialing in their processes to build transistors that are less than 10 nanometers across. The reason Ford and all the other automobile and widget manufacturers buy these parts from TI, NXP, Infineon, Samsung etc is that they don't have the experience or knowledge to make them. Sure they could partner with current ICs manufacturers to increase production, but they are unlikely to actually be designing and manufacturing their own ICs anytime soon.

Not even Apple makes it's own processors/ICs, they license the architecture from ARM in the UK and have the chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC).

Have CEOs learned that buying the cheapest part may not be the best buy long term just like it took the energy crisis to teach us to be petroleum self-sufficient? I hope so.

ACZL wrote:
DW has said for quite sometime as to why we can't maker things here. Local Freighliner dealer parts guy told me a couple weeks ago that he had to tell a customer w/ a brand new 6 wheeler box truck w/ 8K miles that he has to wait some 20+ weeks for some module.

Tell her, cost my dear, cost.

And that's the reason for your addiction to Walmart and Costco stuff buying things you don't need, to impress the people you don't know and only for it to end up in extra storage we have to rent then forget that we already have it... then go back to that same cycle, again and again.

But don't tell her to stop as we will go on recession if she does. And China too and the rest of the world.