Intel Will Shut Down Its Automotive Business, Lay Off Most of the Department's Employees 22
Intel is shutting down its small automotive division and laying off most of its staff in that group as part of broader cost -cutting efforts to refocus on core businesses like client computing and data centers. Oregon Live reports: "Intel plans to wind down the Intel architecture automotive business," the company told employees Tuesday morning in a message viewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive. The company said it will fulfill existing commitments to customers but will lay off "most" employees working in Intel's automotive group. "As we have said previously, we are refocusing on our core client and data center portfolio to strengthen our product offerings and meet the needs of our customers," Intel said in a written statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive. "As part of this work, we have decided to wind down the automotive business within our client computing group. We are committed to ensuring a smooth transition for our customers."
Automotive technology isn't one of Intel's major businesses and the company doesn't report the segment's revenue or employment. But online, the company boasts that 50 million vehicles use Intel processors. Intel says its chips can help enable electric vehicles, provide information to drivers and optimize vehicles' performance. Intel also owns a majority stake in the Israeli company Mobileye, which develops technology for self-driving cars. It doesn't appear the closure of Intel's automotive group will directly affect Mobileye's operations.
Automotive technology isn't one of Intel's major businesses and the company doesn't report the segment's revenue or employment. But online, the company boasts that 50 million vehicles use Intel processors. Intel says its chips can help enable electric vehicles, provide information to drivers and optimize vehicles' performance. Intel also owns a majority stake in the Israeli company Mobileye, which develops technology for self-driving cars. It doesn't appear the closure of Intel's automotive group will directly affect Mobileye's operations.
Lifespan of cars in the future (Score:4, Insightful)
This type of supply chain breakage is why I think we have already passed peak automobile lifetime (cars built 1990-2010): in the future when critical parts fail there won't be any spares, and unless one is willing to take on 10s of thousands of dollars of firmware modding no workarounds either. I would not expect cars sold after 2010 to have lifetimes of more than 10 years or so.
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Re:Lifespan of cars in the future (Score:5, Insightful)
"dealer" was the problem there.
I am sure there is some radiator of sufficient size/cooling that would fit. More than likely it would have required some creativity, creating special mounts, doing something possibly odd like stacking two of them, using something from a different OEM. Which would have gone down a little rabbit hole of needing different hoses or using ones that are not molded, fittings to adapt sizes etc.
No way it was really an unsolvable problem. Some shade tree could have done it but dealers don't like things coming back that isnt their model. Anyone who has ever built a custom or maintained a legacy vehicle with limited support knows sometimes you have revisit 'solutions' after you drive a round for a week to get things 'dialed in'
The firmware stuff is/will be different. Right now the modders and tinkers enjoy some advantage in they have known working examples to look at. When you sitting in your garage Sunday afternoon trying to get your 40 year old car to work, first you'll have find stuff that is electrically and mechanically compatible, then after that you'll have to deal with the software (often deliberately designed to prevent you from working on it, even if it is just symbols stripped etc, but more than likely signed, cipher, or obfuscated). Why does not it work, well you'll never figure it out because you won't ever be able to isolate the problem, are the bad, not really compatible, is it software, is anti-tampering controls you are not aware of, ...
For stuff from the early 2000s thru the teens the answer will be simple enough, replace entire systems like engine management and body modules with something after market. The CAN bus signalling to talk to human interfaces can be worked out easily enough. Collectors and purists will have to just 'get over' it not being totally original. The concourse guys that go wanking about replicating the style of zip tie the factory used to secure the wire harness will need to take a Xanax or something.
For newer stuff, I think it is going to have be all 'resto-mods' or they won't survive at all. Because as soon as you replace the ECM or body module, so goes the dash gauges and controls, the all the touch controls, stereo, entry sensors, etc. I am sure for popular models that lasted many years without major chassis changes you'll see whole kits replacing all the dash components, thru the door handles, etc that fit 2025-2028 Tonale or whatever. That will be the only realistic open for the Sunday afternoon in the garage guy who isn't absolutely made of money and wants to keep his "Classic" alive in 2050.
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Radiators are made to order all the time. There is lots of small shops that make them. After all, it's a very common place of damage for low speed rear-endings.
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Re: Lifespan of cars in the future (Score:2)
You could probably get a custom aluminum radiator made for less than the typical stealership retail cost of the radiator still in production that the chucklefuck dealer tried to modify.
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Old dependable cars is a textbook example of survivorship bias. Peak auto lifetime is an illusion. Cars have never been built to last.
Re: Lifespan of cars in the future (Score:2)
"Cars have never been built to last."
Not as a general rule no, but Mercedes cars of the seventies and eighties were. They stopped making them like that in the nineties, though.
Japanese cars of the nineties, with some notable exceptions which were in the minority, were designed to be easy to service. Alas, that also stopped.
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There are always periods where some manufacturers are better than others.
That said, I suspect that 90% of car models fit into the category of "Will run for 10 years without major issues, then the next 10 years is iffy, then after that you'll be spending far more than car payments on regular repairs." And that, with the exception of the notorious 1960s-early 1990s period where the big names were notoriously crap, this has always been the case.
It's odd, but of the three cars I felt had run their course and ha
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Like I said, survivorship bias. If cars from the 90s lasted 25 years the roads would be full of them. Total new vehicle registrations in the us for that decade is 180 million. That would be over half of all cars currently registered.
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If cars from the 90s lasted 25 years the roads would be full of them.
There are still many of them on the road, and your analysis is missing critical components. For example, all cars need maintenance sometimes. A car "lasting" is predicated upon it receiving that maintenance. If a car doesn't get basic maintenance when it gets old because someone makes a decision that they should buy a newer vehicle even though they will lose money on the decision because they want new and shiny and/or don't know shit about shit, then a perfectly workable vehicle goes to the crusher when it
Re: Lifespan of cars in the future (Score:1)
That's why people continue to keep them running
Automotive parts is a solid business (Score:5, Insightful)
Automotive silicon is not really the growth industry that tech investors look for. A quick look at Intel's competitor: NV's quarterly results shows that their data center business is about 90% of their revenue, gaming about 5-6% and automotive is 1.5%.
It's a tiny part of the business for most of these silicon vendors (it was the case for Freescale and TI too). But the margins on automotive are great, and the long term commitments are great too. Basically you get paid every year to warehouse spare components by contract. When the contract ends, the buyer can option to buy out the inventory at a already negotiated price. Or the silicon vendor keeps the components and sells them for pennies on the dollar (Mouser, Digikey, Jameco, etc pick these industrial parts up). Sometimes the silicon vendor is able to write these sales as a loss even though they totally made many times over that to warehouse it, depending on how the accounting for depreciation worked out for them. (there are pros and cons to depreciating too early - I'm not a tax specialists)
It's a solid business, but making car parts is generally not a growth industry, you get a steady income and somewhat recession-proof too. Manufacturers might want to put your camera systems and AI inference into cars, but they don't make a ton of those kinds of decked out cars. And the components are fairly reliable and aren't replaced frequently and almost never upgraded.
Long term, I think a smaller vendor working in China or Taiwan can make all the chips that all the cars in the world need. But car manufactures would have to take on the R&D side so they can fully specify what they want their chips to do for the next 5, 10, and 15 years. If multiple car makers can get together on standardizing some of the digital components and commoditize these parts, then they could save a ton of money and have parts that really are available for decades. But honestly fat chance in that happening.
Car companies are so risk adverse they won't take the problem on. Recently Ford James Fley, Jr is taking flack for pushing ahead with Ford's EV battery plant. Investors and some of the upper management act like it's this big risky thing. While us regular people see it as obvious. You need control of the most expensive component in your EV line up. You can't let your competitors control a part of your supply chain that carries such a significant impact on your manufacturing cost. But in typical backwards automotive industry thinking, getting involved in something that isn't a 50 to 100 year old practice is considered risky. Serious buggy whip maker mentality in the car industry.
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Have taped out many automotive applications ICs over the past decade, and most of them are 180nm or 90nm, with a family of SERDES chips on 55nm (moving to 16nm).
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If it's a model that's kind of popular for the region I don't see this problem in practice. Once it's a few years old there are tons of third party making parts for things that break with any frequency, including quite specialized parts. And of course lots of parts that are still good coming from totaled cars (which is a very low bar nowadays too, sadly). There MIGHT be some kind of "part locking" Apple-style but I haven't seen it, and mechanics are still just "black box" troubleshooting for everything that
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https://electrek.co/2021/02/02... [electrek.co]
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https://hedgescompany.com/blog... [hedgescompany.com]
Actually it astounds me that the average age of passenger cars on the road is now 14 years. It's difficult to believe.
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My car will be 15 years old in a few months and I plan to keep driving it as long as I can. Stick shifts are much harder to find nowadays.
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I'm doing my part to boost the average.
My 2007 Jeep is 18 years old now. I don't see myself ever replacing it, unless I get into a major accident and it is damages beyond repair.
FWIW, I don't want anything newer than 2007 because it will have TPMS, which I don't want.
GOOD. (Score:2)
Intel has NO business having ANY of their products being integrated with automobiles in anyway. Hell, the only thing that could have possibly been relevant was their GPUs and they have effectively killed the only thing ensuring they were trustworthy, an opensource driver. Naturally, even good drivers couldn't prevent them from being insecure [slashdot.org].
That is what a loser looks like... (Score:2)
Don't think they will still be around in 20 years.
I didn't know they had an automotive business (Score:2)
They must have been doing so well.