Ford Halts Focus Car Plant for Full Month Due To Chip Shortage (bloomberg.com) 61
Ford Motor is halting production of its most popular car model in Europe for a full month because of the shortage of semiconductors disrupting the world's biggest automakers. From a report: The automaker's Focus factory in Saarlouis, Germany, will idle from Jan. 18 through Feb. 19, according to a spokesman, who said lower consumer demand also is playing a factor. The plant is Ford's lone manufacturing facility for the Focus and employs about 5,000 workers. The facility is the latest to fall victim to a supply issue that's disrupting carmakers around the globe. Ford already was forced to idle a sport utility vehicle plant in Kentucky this week, joining Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG, Toyota Motor Corp. and others in scaling back output because of the bottleneck of chips that play a function in everything from brakes to windshield wipers.
Indicative of Repair Part Supply Chain (Score:3)
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Building up an inventory of repair parts and distributing them throughout a region is a different problem independent of the operational logistics for manufacturing. Most importantly, there is more time for a repair inventory to be built up. For manufacturing, parts are needed in quantity some weeks in advanced. Usually these things occur in fits and starts. You might get some shipments late, but then you'll get a big shipment all at once and possibly more than you can easily warehouse.
Just in time manufacturing (Score:2)
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For silicon, you want to buy it as late as possible. Because for most mass produced silicon, it gets cheaper every year. Additionally, for complex components like ASICs and CPUs, it can be desirable to move the latest revision into your product as early as possible. Instead of manufacturing products for months with a known flawed part.
Obviously we don't have crystal balls and can't predict every time these strategies backfire. But there are people smarter than me that manage the risk and costs around this k
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Obviously we don't have crystal balls and can't predict every time these strategies backfire. But there are people smarter than me that manage the risk and costs around this kind of stuff for a living.
And they just rolled snake eyes.
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And now they're paying it all back with interest.
Way back in the before time, we used to call JIT "living hand to mouth".
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And you the cost of shutting a line down and bringing it back up.
Re:Just in time manufacturing (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a higher risk and a higher reward strategy.
For the most part the amount of money they saved with having lower inventory (inventory is expensive) probably is a better savings than the loss of these times when there is a shortage.
Also to note Lower Consumer Demand is a factor too, So I expect Ford is using the supply of chips as an excuse to stop production for a while, to save up some money for cars that are not selling so quickly.
Europe and Asia, is pushing towards Electric Cars so this is a problem for many of auto makers who figured they could just Lobby themselves out of going electric for an other decade.
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But the people who perfected it and who's success made it popular, Toyota, do far more than that. They work with their suppliers to help them become more reliable and better able to deliver in that sort of environment. Toyota would never move a supplier to a JIT delivery pattern until they were confident the supplier could handle it.
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Your comment makes little sense. How often do people have to replace their ECU or ECM? Sure the occasional one may fail but most stay for the lifetime of the vehicle.
Re:Indicative of Repair Part Supply Chain (Score:5, Interesting)
But their current car has driver assist features and proximity sensors to enable an all-around view of the car. The car that backed into them hit where the sensor is and destroyed the sensor. Suddenly it's a $5,000 bill and a week to repair; $2,000+ for the sensor and another $3k for the guy who calibrates it, which takes 8 hours and the guy is booked out a solid week. 15 years ago that would be repaired in a jiffy, paid cash, and move on with life. Now it's an insurance battle.
All these new techs in cars failed to appreciate the full life-cycle and the additional maintenance costs involved with this stuff.
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Well then, I guess it's a good thing insurance pays for all of it, right?
Re:Indicative of Repair Part Supply Chain (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that in turn, premiums go up so the insurance company can remain handsomely profitable in spite of the payouts, right?
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I'm guessing that the sensor costs nowhere near $2000 before the rapacious mark-up. Also guessing the guy that costs $3K doesn't actually see much of that $3K personally.
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And on old enough tech they'll have a third party/aftermarket one available eventually.
It's weird but so many people swear by OEM parts but I'm a cheapskate and almost always buy aftermarket stuff and it typically works fine.
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Yes, aftermarket is generally just as good or better. Sometimes it's the same part from the same line in a different box for half the price.
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The aftermarket manufacturers can only duplicate products without DRM. Fancy sensors and computer modules are copy protected ...
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We're used to chips costing very little, but that's because the volume is often high in the new-build side of things. Semiconductor is high set-up cost, low incremental cost, so the more volume you can produce means you lower the cost in aggregate. Onesie-twosie chips are inordinately expensive. But wait, you say, just build enough to cover expected failures; a large enough sample you could model how many you need. technically true, in prac
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Sorry, not buying it (literally and figuratively). For one, an auto manufacturer is unlikely to buy only 100,000. Second, the chips are unlikely to ONLY be used in cars. Third, whatever it is can likely be accomplished with COTS parts. 4th, OEM parts ALWAYS have a rapacious markup (even moreso before 3rd parties start selling equivalent parts) I don't think they would suddenly make an exception for sensors.
Unless the 3K guy is an independent contractor, he's not seeing much of that $3K. For one, OEMs are no
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I have to wonder at what point these fragile vehicles can be legally declared to be a nuisance. My car is best described as 4 wheels, goes and stops reliably. No matter how careful I am, it is statistically inevitable that someone in my risk pool will bump into one of those eggshell fragile wonders sooner or later and what should have cost my insurance company $100 will cost over $5000, so me and my adequate older car get to pay more for insurance to cover someone else's taste in expensive fragile cars.
Repair costs don't matter to OEM. (Score:2)
Their customers lease or buy new vehicles, are nearly all tech-indifferent, and trade or sell before systems age enough to be much problem.
That's also why OEM (fleet vehicles sometimes excepted) need not care about ease of repair. They're not doing the work, dealers get paid to do the work so can pass the costs to the customer, and planned or unplanned obsolescence isn't something non-mechanics/non-techies really get.
Customers want shiny and will buy anything on credit.
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Note this is in the Europe market.
Where smaller fuel effective cars are more practical and popular. Also Europeans tend to drive less distances on average.
A 200km trip (about 125 miles) would be a major weekend trip, while in America most of us would do such a trip to visit a family member for a lunch and go back.
Maybe... (Score:2)
...depending for the vast majority of semiconductor output worldwide on a mid-sized island off the coast of China wasn't such a good idea.
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Not a great idea, but there are very few companies with the billions to invest in building a facility. Apple and Tesla both have plenty of cash. I wouldn't be shocked if Apple is building a facility now. They're secretive enough, we probably wouldn't know until they announced the phone is due in a week. Tesla is building a full vertical for vehicles with batteries and all, but probably won't want to build their own chips.
Re:Maybe... (Score:4, Informative)
Most of automotive-grade semiconductors are not made in Taiwan (by TSMC or UMC). Automotive chips don't need the latest fab processes.
https://www.marketsandmarkets.... [marketsandmarkets.com]
>The major automotive semiconductor manufacturers include Renesas Electronics Corp. (Japan), Infineon Technologies AG (Germany), STMicroelectronics N.V. (Switzerland), and NXP Semiconductors N.V (Netherlands) among others.
All these companies have their own fabs.
drive by wire won:) (Score:2)
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My guess is the probability of a rusty accelerator cable or stuck carb throttle is greater than a rotten electronic sensor with a software-based watchdog.
Bean counters may run the show, but thankfully engineers aren't all stupid.
Thanks for outsourcing everything to Asia! (Score:4, Insightful)
'Always plan for a rainy day.' But it isn't raining right now, and 'I want my profit'.
- starts raining -
'Where's my profit? Start firing everyone!'
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There is no real reason to think that a larger of smaller more dispersed sources would be better at scaling up to meet an increase in demand.
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In other words, we are underpaying for our electronics due to the outsourcing of pollution, which in the long-run becomes a socialized debt to deal with, at a much higher cost than if we didn't pollute in the first place, correct?
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Bear in mind, I'm not saying it's good, but it is what happens. we have the luxury in the West to tal
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Or rather, foundries are by far the dirtiest industry around. I mean, unless you hate clean air and water free of stuff like arsenic and mercury....
People call the tech industry a "green" industry because they
How about maybe... (Score:2)
...don't make cars so reliant on computers, like in the old days?
Re:How about maybe... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh yeah tuning carburetors, cleaning condensor points, tweaking engine timing with a strobe light. Good times. You were incredibly lucky if your car made it to 100,000 miles back then. Kiss your safety features goodbye too. Airbags, ABS, traction control, etc etc. Go back to engines needing a choke and getting 10mpg and making 130 horsepower from a 7L V8.
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But at least you could be a shade tree mechanic and not have to depend on taking the car to the shop for even the smallest repair and save a bit of money
Re:How about maybe... (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't say ABS has saved *my* life, but it's saved at least one other life. I was driving down Vassar Street next to MIT when a small boy ran out from between a pair of parked cars. I was going about 20 mph and he was maybe 25 feet from my bumper when I saw him and jammed on the brakes. I stopped literally inches from him. He was shorter than the height of my hood, but our eyes locked for the instant my car's nose was down from braking -- the picture of that moment is clear as a snapshot in my memory.
Maybe a formula one driver could have made that stop without ABS, but I'm not embarrassed to admit that's far beyond my skill. Thinking you can brake as well as a professional race driver in an emergency would be hubris for most of us. I'd say I was doing pretty well to make the stop *with* ABS.
Now I'm a "buy it new and drive it into the ground" kind of guy, so it's been over a decade since I bought a car. But when I *do* buy my next car it's definitely going to have computer assisted braking. I had my foot on the brake before I even realized I'd seen that kid; a delay of 100-200 ms would have been a life and death thing. Had I been momentarily distracted or tired, the outcome could have been very different.
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There is no question ABS will stop you sooner than just plain pumping brakes. Usually the people who dislike ABS complain about doing a controlled skid or some other nonsense. If your tires are skidding your brakes aren't doing anything. They also seem shocked about the ability to use the steering wheel while ABS has kicked in.
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That's not true. Once you start skidding, the friction coefficient between rubber and road drops, and you don't decelerate as fast. (Actually, according to those who know better than me, the maximum friction is usually achieved with just a little skidding but before your wheel locks up completely.)
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OTOH, there's all the idiots who wait that much longer to brake because they have ABS and don't understand that while it leaves them in control, it still takes longer to stop when the road is wet and slippery. I've seen studies that show no change in accident rates with ABS, though there's other studies that argue that.
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Other than vendor specific codes there is little reason to visit a dealer. You can change all the brakes, coil packs, sensors, suspension, and anything else you want yourself. I owned a 2007 Mercedes with the airmatic system and did all the work myself. Plenty of companies offer aftermarket tunes for cars to easily boost horsepower. Of course your warranty would most likely be voided. Get with the times grandpa more people than ever are working on cars. Hell YouTubers rebuild Lamborghinis and Ferraris witho
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Yea, I had a couple of cars/trucks back then (around 1968-72 model years). While true that swapping in an electronic ignition was really needed, 100 horses out of a 1.6 litre engine, 40 miles a real gallon, ran for 100's of thousands of miles until the body rusted out. The choke wasn't hard to learn to use, never adjusted the carb, once a year (12,000 miles) needed a tuneup, look at the plugs and regap usually, double check the timing and set the valves. With new wires and distributor cap every few years. A
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So you want to fill up a larger tank of gas or fill up more often. Because you don't have computer control to manage fuel economy. Having to spend your weekends fixing your car, because of some mechanical part that had failed, which now a computer can manage. Having to pay 50% more for a car, because it will need a special component for every function, vs a multi-use computer.
Oddly enough with all the cars that I have owned, I never had a problem with the computer. Most of the things I had to fix Breaks,
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Let's not pretend like the chips they are missing are for the same systems that have been in cars for the past 20+ years. I don't need driver assist, or the data tracking systems, or the fancy in dash electronics.
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No, in fact, it's exactly that. It's the older, low-end chips that they're running short of, not the more modern ones. These are inexpensive, ubiquitous microcontrollers. Nearly all modern consumer goods use lots of these chips for all sorts of ancillary tasks, sensors, etc.
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
There's a whole bunch of factors that converged to cause this worldwide shortage, which the article explains in detail.
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Bicycle manufacturers have also been crippled by pandemic-related supply chain problems.
Recycling? (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure there are still plenty Z80 and 8088 processors in landfills.
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Opps, I erred. (Score:2)
I discarded the 8088s and 8086s when I bought the V20s and V30s.
Who knew?
Reap what you sow... (Score:3)
Meanwhile, dealerships are actually asking for cars with simple displays, because that's what customers want. Manufacturers insist on running the whole car through a touchscreen, because it's cheaper to build than molding and assembling dozens of buttons and sliders. Well, assuming they can get the touchscreens and stuff, of course.
One day in the far future, it'll be cool to have an electric car with analog gauges and a real emergency brake handle again.
Ford (Score:1)