Since microchips are such a small part of a car, how can the chip shortage be affecting them? Won't they just pay more for the chips and get them before other uses? Tripling the chip price in a car is nothing compared to the whole car price.
The market price will eventually cause more chips to be made. That's about a year, maybe two years, from now. Auto assembly lines are idle for a year, maybe...
When "they" #1 pays more and gets a delivery of chips, "they" #2 gets their delivery date missed, and if the contract for delivery says 'time is of the essence...' a court will decide penalties. So, "they" #1 finds no one ready to take their money.
Well, you can't just pay more and get it, if other customers has put in orders/forecast.
Even a single IC that costs nothing can stop an entire car from rolling off the assembly line.
Nonsense. I make 1 million chips, you buy 500K of them to make cars. Fred buys 500K of them to make graphics cards.
Now I can only make 500K chips. One of you loses out. You pay me double, Fred loses out, simple. You can more easily pay me double, because the chips are a far smaller percentage of the cost of a car than a graphics card.
Bit it's also easier to redesign the car to use a different chip or several smaller chips - a graphics card is much more of a one-trick pony.
you don't just change to a different mcu in a car either
That's exactly what Tesla did.
I've sure it wasn't "just change" unless it was some arm soc running the touch screen and UI
Not sure what you are trying to say. The had to do a redesign of the board, I'm sure. I can't say how much work was needed on the software, but much of the hardware interface is virtualized in software these days, even MCUs.
The point is, they did it, and kept making cars, while other auto companies shut down for longer periods.
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