Jaguar Land Rover To Suspend Output Due To Chip Shortage (bbc.com) 33
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is shutting its two main car factories temporarily due to a shortage of computer chips. From a report: The difficulties at Britain's biggest carmaker echo similar problems at other manufacturers, including Ford, who have been hit by a global shortage of chips. JLR said there would be a "limited period" of closure at its Halewood and Castle Bromwich sites from Monday. A mixture of strong demand and Covid shutdowns at chipmakers has also hit phone, TV and video games companies. Tata-owned JLR said in a statement: "We have adjusted production schedules for certain vehicles which means that our Castle Bromwich and Halewood manufacturing plants will be operating a limited period of non-production from Monday 26th April. We are working closely with affected suppliers to resolve the issues and minimise the impact on customer orders wherever possible." Production at a third factory, at Solihull, will continue. The Castle Bromwich factory makes the Jaguar XE, XF and F-Type models, and employs about 1,900 people. Halewood makes the Range Rover, Evoque and the Land Rover Discovery Sport, and has about 4,000 workers.
Rethink (Score:3, Interesting)
I suspect future car designs will be such that the chips can be added mostly after the fact so that roughly 90% of the car can still be built despite a chip shortage. The "zombie" cars would just be stockpiled until the chips arrived. And they'd make it easier to insert and remove stand-in chips or boards for testing purposes.
Re: Rethink (Score:3)
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The problem is that these are often buried and not easy to install. On the production line they get installed well before a bunch of other stuff gets installed on top of them. If Jaguar and Land Rover built the vehicles without them, they would likely lose their asses installing them by hand after the fact. I think what the OP is proposing is to have them less buried and super easy to install, so skipping them on the production line wouldn't be so costly.
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Installation cost is way more than the chip is worth, which is why most processors are buried in the dash and not easy to access. The controller for that $3,000 option package is already built-in by default, but locked out on certain models. It would be nice if more of the electronics were under the hood or the center console where it's easier to access, but they don't do that since it costs more on the assembly line.
That's also why the "skateboard platform" idea is total crap. If it costs even a penny m
What's the difference? (Score:5, Funny)
They tend to need repairs not long after driving, why not just ship them broken straight from the factory?
Re: What's the difference? (Score:3)
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Havent seen an old fashioned carburetor since the mid 80s.
Why this dependence on a specific part? While it's obvious that microcontrollers are important primarily for emissions control, why can't they be replaced by another part? Perhaps the car company should contract chip making the same way Apple does for their products.
Sure Covid plays a role, but it's difficult for me to see this semiconductor shortage without thinking there is some purposeful colluding going on in order to inflate prices. Or engineers aren't smart enough to engineer the hard to get parts out
Re: What's the difference? (Score:2)
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I'd drive a new Land Rover. You couldn't give me a three year old one.
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That doesn't seem very smart. You could give me a three year old one. If I sold it for $1000, I'd be up... $1000.
Pee-DANT! For the WIN!
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"The chips are needed for the scheduler to coordinate the rubbish collector to follow along behind and pick up the parts as they fall off."
Wot? It's the best Indian car ever!
They're not giving you the full story (Score:5, Informative)
The car makers try to spin it like they aren't getting what they paid for, but they're getting exactly what they paid for. it was poor planning on their own part.
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Re:They're not giving you the full story (Score:4, Insightful)
Live by the zero-inventory policy, die by the zero-inventory policy. They had a choice. They choose poorly. Now they have to live with the consequences of that decision.
Think about it this way: You're faced with a decision of how many parts to buy for next quarter. You're scared that you might sell fewer units. Do you:
They chose C. They chose to keep their inventory costs as low as possible, knowing that they were taking a huge risk in the name of short-term profitability. And when that risk burned them (as it eventually always does), they started whining that they can't get what they need, probably hoping that some government will bail them out for their lack of business sense. Sorry, but I just can't feel sorry for them.
Re: They're not giving you the full story (Score:2)
Re:They're not giving you the full story (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe this is a pipe dream, but it would be nice to see standardized modules across car makes. Almost certainly won't happen because some vehicle makers take pride in having a ton of different computers on the CAN, but other makers don't really care that much, and prefer vehicles that are easier to maintain for fleets. That way, core components can be second sourced and easily available, no matter if a boat gets stuck in a canal, a fire happens at a plant (if you are old enough, RAM prices spiked in 1989 due to a fire at some place somewhere which nobody could point to, but it was "vital" to chip production.)
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Any sources for this?
Re:They're not giving you the full story (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't have a way to verify the accuracy of this story, but on a semiconductor investing forum one of the members claimed that some of the car makers actually broke supply contracts with the semi fabs, at the start of the pandemic -- they expected that the fabs wouldn't be willing to sue their customers and ruin a long-term relationship with a big customer.
Auto manufacturers have a reputation for using their suppliers as crumple zones -- the suppliers are expected to absorb the consequences of rapid changes in demand quickly, as part of the Just-In-Time philosophy. But maybe the auto manufacturers were not really as big and important as they thought, compared with the rest of the tech industry.
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They're not important from the chip manufacturers' perspective. If you're building a display driver and car companies suddenly don't want them, it's no big deal, because WFH is causing people to buy TVs and monitors as quickly as the manufacturers can build them.
And there are a heck of a lot more TVs (214M) and computer monitors (135M) sold every year than cars (78M), not to mention cell phones (1.54B). And that's in a normal year, when people weren't buying extra gear for WFH. The car industry is almos
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The summary indicates that there is a CHIP SHORTAGE, which explains the lack of PS5s, not an ordering problem by car manufacturers.
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There's a shortage of PS5 consoles because scalpers bought them all up, seeing they could flip to make quick profit. Being in a pandemic meant demand for consoles is even hig
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As someone who works higher up the semiconductor food chain, the industry in general is supply constrained, not just automotive-specific parts.
1. Fab space was already constrained,
2. package substrates have become constrained AND packaging vendors are demanding that we pre-stock more of it before they take an order
3. testing has been constrained in the current environment since while you can operate testers remotely you still need on-site technicians to maintain the equipment and to load product into whatev
Chips or wafers? (Score:1)
Can we start calling it a silicon wafer shortage instead of a chip shortage? Chips for cars aren't the same chips as ones for mobile phones or laptops. Chips are application specific. silicon is generic.
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"Chips for cars aren't the same chips as ones for mobile phones or laptops."
This car is made in the UK, their chips need fish.
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Now that they've stopped production (Score:2)
Cricket (Score:1)