Elon Musk’s Software Focus Helped Tesla Navigate Chip Shortage | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk’s Software Focus Helped Tesla Navigate Chip Shortage

wsj.com

29 pointslxm20 comments

https://archive.is/20211231044653/https://www.wsj.com/articl...

Does skipping USB ports help in navigating the chip shortage? https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-no-usb-ports-model-3-y...

They removed USB ports for a few days due to the shortage and will retrofit. Owners still preferred to take delivery with missing ports than postpone.

Meanwhile other manufacturers completely remove touch screens: https://www.pcmag.com/news/bmw-nixes-touchscreens-amid-chip-...

Yep. A buddy of mine took delivery of a Model 3 mid December and had the USB ports retrofitted two weeks later.

I ordered a Y in june or july, and then it was reported tat the Y would be shipping wihtout radar, just cameras (I think they saved the radar for the higher end models). I cancelled at that point.

Cool. I wonder what else they are retrofiting later. But Tesla has only happy customers so i may be missing something.

There’s a level of detail frequently missed when discussing this topic.

Most manufacturers fill their cars with dozens of ECUs (electronic control unit) distributed throughout. Each of these needs a separate microcontroller and runs it’s own custom firmware. As they come from multiple suppliers, these are very hard to integrate and it is nearly impossible to upgrade the firmware.

Teslas’s approach is different. They have 2-3 Large PCBs, each with a single PowerPC master controller and a ton of discrete components which drive the various functions of the car directly.

For example, instead of having an ECU controlling the wiper motor, they drive it directly with a 3-phase circuit right from the main controller board.

This is why Tesla can alter the functionality of nearly anything in their cars with a software update—-all they need to do is rewrite the code for their few PowerPC microcontrollers.

It is brilliant and very unlike the mess the OEMs have, with over 100 separate ECUs all running black box firmware.

This YouTube channel, Ingineerix (https://youtu.be/AVCHC2cw0v0) covers this in great detail. It’s inspiring…

Not directly related but I find it hard to understand this chip shortage issue. Is there an excessive demand in certain newer 5nm chip making Fabs or across the board?

Was the shortage actually caused by AMD and ARM chips becoming more popular and as a result the Intel load shifted to TSMC? And does this mean that the Intel plants are idle right now?

The shortage is not in 5nm process nodes... It's in 130nm and 90nm process nodes used for automotive components and other "low tech" stuff.

The primary driver for the shortage is increased demand, mostly from Asia (where many companies are stockpiling 2+ years supply of chips to prepare for US sanctions)

So why are iphones, graphics cards and mobile processors more expensive/out of stock?

When the pandemic started, car manufacturers predicted demand for cars will decline drastically and canceled orders from suppliers. Then it turned out demand actually rises because people still have to go to work but don’t want to take public transport, and old cars still need to be replaced with new cars. So they asked their suppliers not just for the original amount of parts but ordered even more parts. But all the chip production slots were already reassigned to customers from other industries. So then the car manufacturers told their suppliers to pay multiples to get the chips (to outbid others) or outright buy the chip production slots from other companies, otherwise they’d have to halt car production lines. The just-in-time philosophy in the car industry made this worse because they have almost no parts in stock.

Due to the huge cancelations, reassignments and huge orders, supply chains of different industries fight over available chip production capacity. Bringing chip factories online takes multiple years and chip manufacturers are hesitant to invest into more capacity because when it’s available it might not be needed anymore and they will sit on billion dollar ruins. So this chip shortage will take quite a while until all supply chains run smoothly again.

It's amazing that we keep paying lip service to this conman. Nearly anything Musk has been involved in has persisted in spite of his involvement, not due to it. If anything has happened at Tesla that let them be less affected by the chip shortage, then you can be 100% sure that Musk didn't instigate it or have anything to do with it, except to take credit for it.

I'm curious if you have examples to back up your claims?

The same 'nimbleness' that lets you redesign to a new brand of microcontroller for the door handle mechanism in a few weeks, also is part of the reason Tesla scores worst on reliability of all major carmakers.

'Designed in a hurry' and 'battle tested robust reliable design' are pretty much opposites...

> Tesla scores worst on reliability

That was true 3 years ago, however due to the fast rate of improvement recent models exceed other EVs in reliability, especially the more important parts such as the drive train and battery.

Indeed... Tesla now seem to be middle of the pack:

https://www.whatcar.com/news/the-most-reliable-car-brands-in...

Parts from Home Depot used just 15 months ago: https://www.thedrive.com/tech/36274/tesla-model-y-owners-fin...

> Electric-vehicle maker is expected to manufacture roughly 80% more vehicles this year than it did in 2020

So this article is from a year ago?

It's been published on Dec. 30, 2021 5:30 am ET

I guess it's "expected" because q4 numbers are only a projection

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