General Motors Hit by Chip Shortage (reuters.com) 79
General Motors became the latest automaker hit by the global shortage of semiconductor chips as the U.S. automaker said on Wednesday it will take down production next week at four assembly plants. From a report: GM said it will cut production entirely during the week of Feb. 8 at plants in Fairfax, Kansas; Ingersoll, Ontario; and San Luis Potosi, Mexico. It will also run its Bupyeong 2 plant in South Korea at half capacity that week. GM did not disclose how much volume it would lose or which supplier was affected by the chip shortage, but said the focus has been on keeping production running at plants building the highest-profit vehicles -- full-size pickup trucks and SUVs as well as the Chevrolet Corvette sports car. GM said it intends to make up as much lost production as possible.
Trump did it (Score:1)
He cut off the Chinese, what did he expect. Can't we all figure out how to get along and care about each other as humans instead of tribes?
Re: (Score:2)
What does aggressive people have to do with tribalism being right? Bad individuals can be dealt with as individuals without devolving to grouping.
Re: (Score:2)
Because:
Might Makes Right! (C, ~4000 B.C.)
Your response is what SHOULD be the response, yet instead we elevate them to positions of authority, and then they wing up leading the group(s).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah really. China has the best track record for caring about each other as human beings.
Re: (Score:2)
Who has a good record on it? Every country and "peoples" have done rotten things at some point in the past.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Every country and "peoples" have done rotten things at some point in the past.
The problem is not what was done in the past, but what is happening now.
Re: (Score:3)
"China has the best track record for caring about each other as human beings."
They care about Han human beings.
Yellow supremacists, the lot of them.
Re: Trump did it (Score:1)
Re: Trump did it (Score:1)
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-has-finally-figured-out-how-to-make-ballpoint-pens-2017-1?amp
Please don't feed the trolls (Score:2)
Now, I'd argue Trump's extremely poor response, especially removing our medical foot soldiers from China (fight it over there so we don't have to fight it over here) was a contributory factor. e.g. being a world leader means that when the rest of the world is fucking up we don't throw up our hands and say "welp, not my circus, not my monkeys", but he's by no
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
There's also the issue that China has been squeezing the supply of all sorts of products globally to get concessions from every major government. China's government doesn't have a term limit, so they can think 20 years ahead.
20 years ago they started by keeping manufacturing cheap to attract businesses while lecturing the US and the EU how bad they are doing with emissions and pollution to drive up regulation and cost there. Then they infiltrated businesses abroad, funded STEM students to go abroad in an ef
Re: (Score:2)
Good on them for outplaying us. Like us stupid fat lazy westerners deserved to keep living off the fat of the world at the poorer countries' expense for ever and ever.
We had a good run. Give them a crack at it. They can't do a worse job than us.
They can absolutely do a worse job than us, and if you believe they'll share their new found wealth and power any more than the West did, I have a couple of bridges to sell you. China will be far worst than the west, in part because as mentioned above, they can plan farther ahead than any western government.
Re: (Score:2)
Tribalism is human nature - as it likely had an evolutionary advantage. Taking care of yourself and those in your local circle even if that means hurting those outside of it, is a successful survival strategy. You see the same result in nature where most apes will engage in tribalism and animals like wolves do the same with packs, and lions with prides.
I'm not saying its right or wrong, but at some level the behavior is hard-wired into us.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes what's the point of having evolved an advanced brain if we end up thinking the same way as snakes and have the empathy of a crocodile?
Re: Trump did it (Score:1)
Yes what's the point of having evolved an advanced brain if we end up thinking the same way as snakes
I could not agree more. You should work on that.
Tribalism did it. (Score:2)
I'm not saying its right or wrong, but at some level the behavior is hard-wired into us.
I agree. *votes 'insightful'*
Re: (Score:2)
Tribalism is human nature - as it likely had an evolutionary advantage. Taking care of yourself and those in your local circle even if that means hurting those outside of it, is a successful survival strategy. You see the same result in nature where most apes will engage in tribalism and animals like wolves do the same with packs, and lions with prides.
I'm not saying its right or wrong, but at some level the behavior is hard-wired into us.
If you're not going to say it's wrong, I certainly will.
If we're ultimately not going to treat each other any better than apes or wolves, there's no sense in calling us advanced or civilized. We're no better than the stupid animals we ignorantly mock.
Survival of the fittest is more a necessity in the animal kingdom. As long as humans can come together and create and sustain enough resources for everyone, there is no real reason to carry that mentality over into the human realm. If you're looking for the
Re: Trump did it (Score:1)
Yet, if you go into the opposite direction and care TOO much you will find your society f(l)ailing as well. Humans being on average what they are, they will go into full parasite mode at both right and left sides of the scales, so we gave to deal with "It's complicated."
Re: (Score:2)
If we're ultimately not going to treat each other any better than apes or wolves, there's no sense in calling us advanced or civilized. We're no better than the stupid animals we ignorantly mock.
So much this.
Mouse (from The Matrix) was 100% wrong when he said that, 'If we deny our impulses, we deny the very thing that makes us human'.
In fact, the exact opposite is true. The ability to deny our instinctual reactions in favour of pre-decided cogitated actions is precisely what separates us as human beings from other animals who are slaves to their instincts.
The entire point of civilisation - what we strive to do to rear our children into society - is to replace instinctive reactions with restraint an
Re: (Score:2)
And you believe these are Chinese chips? How about all the steps in between chips and warehouse?
Re: (Score:2)
How much of the semiconductor industry is from China (PRC)? There are a lot of chp shortages, but also a lot finely tuned supply chains and just-in-time manufacturing that gets disrupted by covid and other changes in the markets. Sometimes even lower output from a single chip manufacturing plant will have global economic effects.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
TSMC has fabs in many countries, but their newest 7nm process is only in Taiwan. The other fabs are 22nm or larger.
Re: (Score:2)
Trump runs Japan, Germany, and China? (Score:3, Insightful)
I wasn't aware that Trump is President of Japan, Germany, and China. Automakers like Subaru, Nissan, and Volkswagen are having these problems in their Germany, Japan, and China plants.
Covid shut down the chip foundries at the same time it shiftes demand to particular types of consumer electronics. That has created a worldwide squeeze.
What the orange asshole DID do is try to have policies that encourage manufacturing chips in the US, like the upcoming foundry in Austin. As those plants come online (if new
To be fair those foundries (Score:3)
Now, I know what you're thinking, "But the foundries have been in development for years before COVID". Yes, yes they have. The people who run our economy knew a disaster like COVID was on the way.
The takeaway here is the
Re: (Score:3)
> Now, I know what you're thinking, "But the foundries have been in development for years before COVID". Yes, yes they have. The people who run our economy knew a disaster like COVID was on the way.
All one needs to know is that shit happens. The 2020 shit was covid, next year will have different shit. It doesn't really matter exactly which particular type of shit is gonna next month - there is gonna be some shit.
So, is it a good idea for the US economy to be reliant on $other_country? No, because shit h
Re: (Score:2)
The "orange asshole" didn't have policies. He flailed around, flinging poo at today's target like a monkey. Some of the people around him may have had policies, which they were able to get enacted without Trump really realizing what was going on.
In any case, what Trump did has made China invest heavily in semiconductors. The ZTE embargo showed to China's leadership that th
Re: (Score:2)
Trump's policy toward China was one of short-term pain for long-term gain. That's almost always the mark of wise decision making. An example being skipping school today (short term pleasure) vs studying (short-term pain for long-term gain).
The interesting thing is that he might have also given China short-term pain for long-term gain. They had it rubbed in how dependent they are on US chips, now they are putting serious effort into becoming more independent from the west.
Re: (Score:2)
That's true. It reduces dependence both ways.
Re: (Score:2)
Austin's new chip foundries if and when they get built and start production, will not give the US any ability to decide such things, except some safety requirements in laws
Re: (Score:2)
Well ...
"unless you're suggesting that the US is going to go full socialist"
It seems the US is indeed headed that way. Because some of us weren't paying attention in school and haven't learned from the countries that already tried that.
Yet even in the middle of the red scare, you had the Defense Production Act, which allows the US Federal government to order US companies to produce particular goods. Trump brought up the DPA to "encourage" companies to make ventilators and other things for the pandemic. I'm
Re: (Score:2)
I got curious, so I did just look it up.
The US did indeed use the Defense Production Act many times during the covid pandemic.
Re: Trump did it (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Completely & utterly wrong. The usual crap from the unwashed, and not funny either...
Start of the pandemic car manufacturing volumes crashed, car makers stopped or suspended their silicon chip orders, Taiwanese manufacturers stopped production.
Car orders now go up, car makers can't get any silicon, coz it's months & months & more from order to delivery..
No silicon, no touchscreens or ECUs, smart windscreen wipers etc. etc. global panic. Cue -> /. general inaccurate bollocks..
Trump didn't help
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
He cut off the Chinese, what did he expect.
Yep, this is another fabulous win for Trump, a huge tremendous success. Like he said, "trade wars are fun, and easy to win!"
Soooo much winning....
Re: (Score:3)
While I'm all for giving Trump every last measure of deserved blame, in this case the chips are coming from TSMC in Taiwan.
The blame here is Just In Time inventory. Also known as OOPS, looks like we're not producing anything today.
The auto industry will now be collectively paying back every last penny they saved by keeping reserves small plus a big wad of interest to convince TSMC to bump other customers and crank out a very expensive run of a normally inexpensive chip.
Don't worry, the savings already got
Re: (Score:2)
But we're not talking about transmissions, we're talking chips, A reel of a thousand can easily be carried in one hand. For things like brakes, you don't just change chips on a whim, it takes quite a while to validate that the new part and any needed design change to use it hasn't introduced an unforeseen problem. It takes a while.
When is the last time you saw an ad for new cars proudly crowing that they use only the latest generation of microcontrollers in their ABS?
Note that delaying the problem for 6-12
Re: (Score:2)
Time will tell, the losses are ongoing. Note too that the losses would be even higher if they weren't getting sweetheart bailouts from taxpayers. Perhaps they shouldn't so they can actually learn something.
Re: (Score:2)
The chip supply has all been diverted for the Bill Gates tracker chips that are inserted into Covid vaccines.
I'm so old I remember TI chips Made in USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Micron (Score:2)
I believe Micron still manufactures in the USA. I remember getting a tour of their Boise facility in the late 80s or early 90s.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yeah and we offshored all that technology manufacturing to say money? Good Plan.
For onshoring to work, American consumers have to be willing to pay more for the box with "MADE IN THE USA" stamped on the outside.
When I was a kid in the mid-70s, a color TV like you might put in your living room cost the equivalent of $3600 today ($750 in 1975).
Why? Because it was made in the USA. Today, people expect to pay 1/7th of that for a TV. And that is replicated across everything in your home, from knives
Re: (Score:2)
That TV was made with fixable parts. Is wasn't just a power supply, logic board and screen like today.
Re:I'm so old I remember TI chips Made in USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Much cheaper to make today even if not off-shored. Oh and that TV lasted 25+ years, including being repaired twice. Think about that, TVs could be repaired, the repairs were even cheap. Repairman simply soldered in a new component. And the TV was made to be repaired, it was a floor console unit and after removing the back the entire main board swung down on a hinge and many daughter boards could be unplugged and replaced (or themselves simply repaired).
New TV breaks today and entire thing is replaced, such a waste - hey it was cheap.
Re:I'm so old I remember TI chips Made in USA (Score:4, Interesting)
You can still have it repaired. But you don't want to take it be serviced because if a new TV is $500, and the technician is charging out $150/hr, so it's going to cost you around $300 to fix it. For a $500 TV.
If your time is free, fix it yourself - you can often buy a "for parts only" TV with the same board for under $100 or so shipped, and replace the faulty part yourself. Then it only cost you $100. And the broken TV might have been gotten for free from someone who tried to get it fixed and balked at paying the price of a new TV to fix their old one - the option here is to just buy a new TV.
So you can have yourself a new TV for just replacement parts and a bit of your time.
When a TV cost a lot more, it made sense to fix it - after all it could be a year's savings to buy one, which is why most people only had one TV. There you'd fix it because even if the guy charged a lot, a new TV cost a lot more.
The term is called "Beyond economical repair". And sometimes, even if you do it as a hobby, things can be like that because it would cost more in replacement parts than what you can buy another unit for.
That's why there's plenty of "free" electronics recycling places - they do exactly that. They take in a bunch of computers and build working ones out of the pile that comes in and sell those at a heavy discount to people. They're almost always volunteer driven because none of the stuff can be professionally repaired and the prices are basically just to keep the lights on.
Re: (Score:2)
The repair cost on my last CRT “repairable” TV was more than I paid for a comparable replacement a few years back.
When my 10+ year old big screen TV breaks, hell yes I am chunking it. Did I mention it weights much less than the CRT it replaced?
Re: (Score:3)
What really boggles the mind is just how much cheaper things have gotten to manufacture as a result of this level of consolidation, and yet every manufacturer's goal is to scrap over every last fraction of a penny they can. Even in a competitive market, do you really have to worry about saving two cents on a product that sells for $300?
At what point does this level of integration and consolidation start introducing supply issues that might threaten your business?
Re: (Score:2)
My parents had a TV set made in the 1950s (TV, radio, and phonograph all in one piece of furniture made with real wood and doors so you could close it off), and it didn't have any boards as we think of them nowadays. It had discrete components that c
Re: (Score:2)
The cost to repair was dramatically less than the cost to replace.
Repair vs replace costs have reversed.
[Drops mic.]
Re: (Score:2)
It's not just TI. I miss the old days. :(
Re: (Score:2)
The good old days when DEC owned the airspace over 128 corridor and the Texas Silicon Strip actually made technology.
Oh yeah and we offshored all that technology manufacturing to say money? Good Plan.
How made in the USA help GM when they pay bottom dollar prices against tech companies who have no problem getting chips?
GM is acting like a over entitled teenage girl here.
Just in time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe a car should be a car (Score:2)
Howabout making a car that's a car, and not a rolling computer?
Sure, the main engine control computer is pretty essential these days for the type of reliability and fuel efficiency we're used to, but beyond that, leave off all the 21st century equivalents of 1960s chrome and tail fins and make a driver-oriented vehicle with basic controls and analog instruments. Why does the parking brake need to be a button that goes to the CPU and then to an electric actuator, rather than a directly actuated lever with a
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
I was in a wreck a year and a half ago. So I started driving our spare car - a 2001 Tahoe. It doesn't have heated and cooled seats like the one before it, it's considerably noisier inside, and of course gas mileage sucks (but my commute to work is 3 miles, so it's not a disaster). It doesn't look nearly as good, either. But it has climate controls that put out air at whatever heat or cooling level you want - unlike the one it replaced, and unlike my wife's car
All the capacity is used up to produce Gates chips (Score:1)
Chip Fabs are a National Security threat (Score:5, Insightful)
I really do think the US government needs to stop and consider the current state of chip fabs in the world. The US has been falling behind in its ability to source current gen chips. Intel has been struggling to move past 10nm and the only foundries that have been able to push them out to the market at reasonable rates are Samsung and TMSC. That's not to say they (Samsung/TSMC) aren't glossing over their good batch ratios (they might be), but even if their rates are like 3 good chips in every 5, that's still better than no chips for the market which is where Intel is right now.
The US has Global Foundries, Texas Instruments, and a handful of smaller fabs; but none of these fabs seems to be in the market of producing chips for the market at large (otherwise we wouldn't be seeing such shortages across the industry). If we aren't careful, we could find the rug pulled out from underneath us and feel like we've been catapulted 10-15 years into the past. We need to be careful about not creating govt. sanctioned/funded monopolies, but I think we need to take a long hard look and see if anything can be done to clear the road to make it easier for the US return to having comparable chip fabs that can supply the market domestically. (Other major countries should do so likewise)
In our current society, if you don't have chips, then you may as well be living as a caveman.
That's not where the profit is. (Score:2)
The elites give zero fucks about the US or the American people or ANY OTHER PEOPLE.
Governments are organized crime bought, paid for and otherwise pwned by the ultra-rich who run them by manipulating the dumbfuck masses.
Re: (Score:2)
Even if we onshore production, foreign interests will still be running them, at every level of operations. Americans have no aptitude/interest anymore for this kind of work. So I'm not sure there is much to be gained in terms of reducing strategic liability by on-shoring. Plenty of ways this could still go sideways.
Re: (Score:2)
The US has been falling behind in its ability to source current gen chips.
No it hasn't. Only companies who don't want to pay competitive rates have trouble sourcing components. Ask yourself why it's only car companies complaining despite the US having a very large tech sector and plenty of companies which produce electronic components.
Welcome to the world of supply and demand. A PS5, a new Xbox, an amazing new generation of processor, and GPUs that represent the biggest intergenerational in performance were all released in the same year. Somehow Apple is not having issues with sh
Modern car problems (Score:1)
I wonder if these chips are used in the ECM, or if they're just part of the stupid infotainment systems which every late model car seems to have these days? I miss the days when cars were just cars; I never asked for a damned iPad on wheels.
Global shortage of WHAT? (Score:2)
I have to see a specific example of what is long lead time.
Which Chips? (Score:3)
I keep hearing "chip" shortage. It might as well be potato chips for all the specificity we're hearing. I would guess that these are custom ASICs or other automotive-specific chips. Assuming that's correct, then perhaps one lesson is that they should try to design their cars to use more standard off-the-shelf chips. There are plenty of ARM chips or microcontrollers that they could use that have long-term support (meaning availability), but that might mean redesigning some things.
I would love to see a technical article explaining just what chips they're having trouble getting, and why they need those chips instead of something more generic.
Re: (Score:2)
We just had a letter from microchip.
They explained during COVID they had a massive pullback of orders with no forward visibility of forward orders. Then suddenly they had a 70% surge in orders. They are now implementing a forward non cancelable non refundable forward order book for Q4 2021 and Q1 2022. They expect this to full in the next few days. If you don’t have your orders in, no supply for next 12 months!
Or just bad planning (Score:2)
Wouldn't a better headline be something along the lines of "GM fails to plan their supply"?
Maybe they should go back to old school. (Score:1)