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Comment by downrightmike | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much the only auto supplier that wasn't forced to move to just outside the automaker's own factories and on the tight chain of just in time. It was just acceptable to not highly integrate them, and oops. Maybe the automakers will make their own fabs. Which is what is really needed. But then again, we've been in a gut because of over production for years. So really, this is just automakers shifting the blame for the lack of demand of the last decade to someone that their stockholders are ok with blaming, because why admit your mistakes and fix them, when you can blame someone else?

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> Maybe the automakers will make their own fabs. Which is what is really needed.

Seems like a massive investment in something that isn't their core competency (at all) for a 6-month disruption that hits ~once a generation+. It'd be a lot cheaper to just pay a foundry for reserved capacity, to stockpile a year supply of chips, or engineer cars to have more options for chips.

> or engineer cars to have more options for chips

You mean like having open standards that consumers can plug-and-play their own devices into?

That's absurd. /s

How would auto makers vendor-lock consumers after that?

You mean open standards like the web, amp and floc where google controls 90% of the market ? Or the PC where wintel controls 80 % ? Who will be responsible when your google analitycs powered control unit will cause the airbags to deploy during driving ?

This is such a shame, companies sould be forced to design their infotainment system in order to let customer installing software from different vendors in it.

This is a solved problem with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, no? I don't care one bit about the quality of the built-in system.

If Intel couldn’t keep up with the latest fabs I can’t believe an automaker could start from 0 and have any remote chance of success. Volume would be too low to make it work financially even if they could.

Old processes don’t disappear when the cutting edge manufacturers switch to smaller features. A lot of jelly bean parts, like the kind that go into a car, are made with larger features that are easier to work with. I think manufacturing is a core competency for automakers. While there are significant differences between car making and chip making, I don’t think you should discount an automaker’s ability to manufacture things.

> I don’t think you should discount an automaker’s ability to manufacture things.

Have you see infotainment UIs?

Edit: my point was actually how bad they are. Carmakers don't do tech well.

> > I don’t think you should discount an automaker’s ability to manufacture things.

> Have you see infotainment UIs?

> Edit: my point was actually how bad they are. Carmakers don't do tech well.

Android UI and Win 10 are also terrible. And at least Win10 comes from someone who claims a lot of experience in this field (although some claim that they just stole the ideas).

> Android UI and Win 10 are also terrible.

MacOS is pretty awful as well, just differently bad.

I haven't seen car UIs in a hot second, so honest question: What's in there that cannot be done with, say, chips from 2008?

High resolution displays everywhere running fancy 3D graphics, trying to emulate good old analog dials and controls in their responsiveness. Many 2021 cars no longer have a single analog dial in them.

It’s all done by pushing a ton of pixels from a CPU that’s probably not older in process than 14nm.

You dont need 5nm transistors to run your vehicle. 10 year old processes would probably be enough for automotive needs.

Lots of industries have to plan for black swan events that hit once in a generation. But even then that's hugely optimistic. TPS/Lean has been in widespread use since what, the 80s? What happens when war breaks out, or we end up in a serious Geopolitical Conflict (Trade War), or run into another energy crisis or shipping crisis like what happened with the Suez Canal.

Owning your supply chain is a core competency. It's just that a few decades of relative global stability has allowed us to bury our heads in the sand in exchange for a few short-term optimizations.

> Maybe the automakers will make their own fabs.

Or, perhaps, they could ... like ... hold inventory.

Gasp! But that's just crazy talk.

Er, wait, that's exactly what Toyota did when they discovered that a semiconductor supply shock could kill their business.

Should they make their own tires as well? Mine their own ore? All parts of the supply chain are subject to external shocks. Increased vertical integration isn't necessarily the answer in all cases.

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