They also do this so that they know nobody is using slave labor.
Maybe things have changed; I'd certainly be glad to hear it. But we all know of Wall Street's long history of hatred towards physical inventory.
Accounting and taxes on physical inventory are pretty stupid and cause a lot of Wall Street's hate for inventory. The more costs there are to storing inventory the less desirable or even viable it is to store inventory.
Automakers (and everybody else) reacted very quickly and shut down/decreased staff almost immediately.
Where they got caught out was in assuming that the semiconductor industry would return to normal quickly. That was a huge mistake.
Everything in business is so hyper-optimized to hold no inventory that nobody can absorb demand increase shocks of any amount, anymore. In addition, the fact the companies actively downsized during Covid meant that things couldn't even go back to pre-Covid levels quickly.