quote:

Originally posted by bald1:

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
You can't meet Fuel Economy, Emissions, and Safety regulations without all the electronics. Blame the federal government for all the mandates. It's not going to decline, it will continue to get more complex.

I know you're right but I still can't help but think there is a lot of superfluous "stuff" in today's vehicles that could be eliminated. I can parallel park myself as an example.

I know but try this:

Mandatory Air Bags (many now), Anti-Lock Brakes, Rear View Cameras, Vehicle Stability Control.

Fuel economy and emissions regs lead to very complex engine control systems, tons of sensors, throttle-by-wire systems, and OBD systems with tons of fault codes.

Electric power steering reduces parasitic losses from hydraulic based systems.

CVT's are more efficient than geared automatic transmissions but they are electronics intensive.

I miss mechanical throttles that didn't cause rev-hang and let you engine brake more easily. I miss mechanical limited slip differentials and no traction control that let you actually drive the car. I still have manual transmissions but they won't be available much longer. My last "real" car was my 2002 WRX. My 2013 wasn't the same but it was OK. My 2017 Civic Si 6-speed is nice and an awesome car for the price, but it's not mechanical enough anymore.

I hate rev hang.

Also keep in mind the massive increase in demand for personal electronics. Everybody is / was working from home and staying home.
New TVS
Game consoles
Computers
WiFi routers
Stereo
Home theater components
Roku/Apple TV’s
Etc. Etc. Etc.

All these things use chips and all are competing for the resources. It’s a little bit like the ammo crunch. Add a few million extra consumers to an already strained supply chain and well here we are.

Don’t hold your breath for anything close to what we have considered “normal” in the past. For the first time in my life I am not sure we are ever getting back to the old “normal”.

IIRC the graphics cards are used in bit coin mining and that has created an exponential demand for them. That takes up chip production capacity and if auto makers bailed on their orders then paying customers filled the gap.

Those in production and retail have seen this happen in the gun industry three times now, add the damage covid mandates did destroying production capacity and laying off millions, it's going to take time to rebuild multiple industries. Keep in mind how much factory production of the sub components happens overseas ie name a red dot maker 100% Made in the USA. Lots of firearms parts, even for the AR15 are made overseas - there was a short lived issue over MIM parts made in India. They still are. Corporations don't want to pay $25 an hour for production with benefits when a factory across the ocean can get workers for $5 and no benefits. And the cost of those benefits is another 150% of employee pay here - employers share of taxes health insurance etc. Not there.

We're too cheap to pay ourselves scrambling over cheap products from overseas. And that puts us at the end of a very long chain of supply and transportation where any interruption will jerk the train of cars harshly. Even make them uncouple.

All of this mess can be traced back to the government fueling demand while eliminating supply. They aren’t really talking about it, but there it is. Everybody staying home, getting checks for free, and chasing a dwindling supply of goods. It’s really that simple. What is a dollar but a claim upon a good or service, and if there’s less goods than dollars, then the price will rise and shortages will be manifest.

Only after pricing pressure decreases demand sufficiently will pricing and supply achieve some moderation. The government could help by decreasing demand; that is, stop its own spending, and decrease the secondary demand through enhanced unemployment benefits or other social spending. Instead, the dimwits in charge are doing just the opposite. Don’t expect moderation for years. This disruption is here for at least five years, IMO, and that’s IF the government would get its act together.

I keep adding to this post. Can’t be helped…
Here’s an example of why things won’t improve. The religion of climate change, and their prophets at places like C.A.R.B., won’t change to help with the current crisis. As of Jan 1st, 2023, CARB will restrict all California trucks to 2011 models or newer. This will eliminate 20% of all commercial trucking in the state. You think the ports have been a problem before, just wait until next year.

If I wanted to comply with these new rules, and decided to buy a new truck, the earliest delivery would be late 2024 or early 2025. So there is no way to comply. Watch the transportation collapse, if they don’t relax the regulations. But they don’t seem to care. God help us all.

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:

quote:

Originally posted by BigSwede:
Intel is building a huge plant in OH I believe

Billions of our tax $$$ heading their way

I heard about that too, but it is for modern scale chip architectures and will not affect automakers current woes.

I guess if they canceled all of their supply orders, and the chip makers shucked them all over to someone else, but who in the hell could soak that supply bubble? That's a lot of X-Boxes.

Remember, when the morons in Washington shut the country down with no forethought as to the ramifications that would cause, people were forced to work from home and PC, laptop, and other consumer electronics absorbed all the available chip inventories. Since auto makers plan and order chips years in advance, they're behind on production and are still suffering shortages.

And don't forget (which most of the market has already), Ford and GM still have something like 50k+ 2021 trucks and SUV's sitting around the country in fields waiting on final components so they can be finished and put up for sale. What I do not see is a market for these vehicles given their carrying costs, current inflation, rising interest rates, and current fuel costs (and the demonization of anything that uses fossil fuels).

Auto manufacturing and sales are not going to be back to anything approaching normal for quite some time, especially if the current crop of retards in Washington keep F-ing up everything they touch.

^^^ By 2024, medium size diesels will be outlawed in CA. Buses and other vehicles will have to convert to gasoline, natural gas, or propane engines.

Not sure if pickup trucks are affected because of how the EPA buckets things. Chassis cabs are moving from Medium/HD to the Light/Medium bucket (pickup truck bucket) which makes it harder to meet regs in Medium/HD for things bigger than a chassis cab. Credits from the chassis cabs which can beat emissions regs by a decent margin can't be used to offset the next size class up now.

And the EPA is talking about taking CARB nationwide, maybe in 2027. That really screws things. We will see the true effects of unelected regulators making political decisions that will have ripple effects they can't even dream of.

And the assholes talking to the media act like Diesels are dirty and haven't been cleaned up like gasoline engines. Diesels are incredibly clean now compared to unregulated, espcecially since 2007 for highway engines. Anyone who has driven one knows about aftertreatment systems, exhaust filters, DEF, and so on.

quote:

Originally posted by Dave Bean:
For example, they will deliver n F150 with chips for the engine, brakes and traction control installed. However, the heated seats and heated steering wheels related chips will be installed later, the purchasers have to bring it back to the dealership to have the chips installed.

And how many people ya think are going to jump on the opportunity to buy a $50k+ car missing parts, that the dealer at some point (no date available or provided) will have to install? And how ya think the insurance carriers are going to react to being asked to insure incomplete vehicles? Yeah, they aren't going to warm to that idea.

This is a monumental mess that none of the automakers are going to escape from without great pain and losses.

Just north of Phoenix there is a microprocessor plant being built. It’s hard to miss the 30 cranes all around the facility. Easy to spot from I-17. Still about three years out I do believe.

Here’s an article about it.

I've been in the semiconductor industry for 20+ years, with most of them spending at least some of my time managing micros that are heavily used in the car industry.

To answer r0gue's question directly - BMW (and all manufacturers) get completed components from its tier 1 suppliers. They make plans to schedule production based on the stated availability of these components. Downstream, all the tier 1's, who make the components, are literally hand-to-mouth on chips from their major suppliers. In your specific example, every BMW has several of my company's controllers attached to the sensors in the exhaust system - among other places. We currently have no buffer inventory of this product (or any of the 30-40 other MCUs that can be used in a pinch). So the only way we can supply them with parts they didn't previously have on order is if somebody else cancels an order of automotive-tested devices (you start to see the problem here).

This situation happened because the tier 1 suppliers, who are very cost conscious, decided that they would cancel all of their chip orders in anticipation of the world ending back in 2020. When that didn't happen, they found themselves at the back of a very long line. Long story short, customers panicked and over-ordered. How much? I have no clue, since not many have cancelled.

Currently, there are orders on the books for about 1 and a half years' worth of fab output (think billions of chips) running at 100% capacity... which, well.. will never happen, because shit happens.

As other folks have said - there is no way to instantly increase capacity in any given fab - and in the case of automotive products, some of the equipment used is no longer purchasable due to the age of the process technology used.

Now, add a chip shortage to a wiring harness shortage, and a carbon fiber resin shortage, among other things- and you get wildly shifting schedules.

There are hundreds of chips in a modern car. This is stupid. You could run the engine and emissions control on one chip. One chip for the ABS and back up camera (when would you use both at the same time?). Another for the interior electronics, like entertainment, climate, etc. One for traction control and all the other nanny systems. Or people could learn to drive. If you have an automatic transmission, another for that. And for gods sake, get rid of the electronic steering. Their feedback sucks. It does have a parasitic draw on the engine, but so does the generator demand for all the other new electronic systems.

quote:

Originally posted by Nuclear:
You could run the engine and emissions control on one chip

They are. This is how it’s always been. But you’re forgetting that all the O2 sensors, the Knock sensors, the HEGO sensors, traction-related sensors, steering position sensor, throttle position sensor, yaw rate sensors, etc. are all connected digitally. This is why those parts of a car don’t break anymore. That digital connection requires processing power on both ends. And FYI - the processor fast enough to do the engine management cannot run at temperatures anywhere near as high as the ones attached to the catalytic converters. So you have that problem. Combining ABS and a non-ISO26262 system is illegal. Infotainment systems are non safety critical, so they can use consumer electronics, which is good- because it’s also home to the fastest (and least reliable) processor in any car.

That there are a bunch of 50-cent micros and sensors strewn across a car is not the problem. The problem is the way the companies who build the cars have tried to cut costs has folded over on them and screwed them royally.

At the end of the day, r0gue is buying a compact SUV that is faster than any Ferrari produced before the year 2000, and gets 20MPG while weighing more than a 1980 Cadillac Eldorado. If the price to pay is a few hundred dollars in chips, sign me up!

This is what led me to just purchase a new 2021 Nissan Titan Pro4x... it was the only vehicle available around me that checked off all the boxes and was actually available (timing is key, they are on the lot less than a week average right now but deliveries are still occurring).

Chevy/GMC was missing features (possibly available later), Ford had features but only in the turbo or hybrid models (done with that stuff). Toyota deliveries seem non-existent up here right now.

quote:

Originally posted by teombe:

quote:

Originally posted by Nuclear:
You could run the engine and emissions control on one chip

They are. This is how it’s always been. But you’re forgetting that all the O2 sensors, the Knock sensors, the HEGO sensors, traction-related sensors, steering position sensor, throttle position sensor, yaw rate sensors, etc. are all connected digitally. This is why those parts of a car don’t break anymore. That digital connection requires processing power on both ends. And FYI - the processor fast enough to do the engine management cannot run at temperatures anywhere near as high as the ones attached to the catalytic converters. So you have that problem. Combining ABS and a non-ISO26262 system is illegal. Infotainment systems are non safety critical, so they can use consumer electronics, which is good- because it’s also home to the fastest (and least reliable) processor in any car.

That there are a bunch of 50-cent micros and sensors strewn across a car is not the problem. The problem is the way the companies who build the cars have tried to cut costs has folded over on them and screwed them royally.

At the end of the day, r0gue is buying a compact SUV that is faster than any Ferrari produced before the year 2000, and gets 20MPG while weighing more than a 1980 Cadillac Eldorado. If the price to pay is a few hundred dollars in chips, sign me up!

Amazing when you think about it. I had to Google to check myself!

1980 Cadillac ElDoroto = 3,800lbs
2022 BMW X3 M40i = 4,392

1980 Cadillac ElDoroto = 5.7L V8 with 170hp 0-6- in 11.4 sec
2022 BMW X3 M40i = 3L I6 382hp 0-60 in 4.4sec

-- 2000 Ferrari 550 Maranello 0-60 mph 4.1 So still, on par.

I believe it is faster than every since Porsche 911 made before 2010.

https://www.supercars.net/blog/porsche-0-60-times/

I think the argument could be made that all of the infotainment creature comfort stuff could be paired down, but it's probably the wrong chip scale to make a difference.

Here's an ironic twist, I sold my more modern car over a year ago, and started daily driving my fun psuedo-classic. It's a 1998 Mercedes Benze E430 V8 with rear wheel drive. I'm sure it has a few handful of chips in it as well, even 24 years ago. Stability control, anti-lock brakes, power windows/sunroof control.

Once I get my new wheels, the Merc will probably go with my son off to start his new life post-college.

If my new car or truck is A, already 1-2 years old from sitting in storage because it can't be completed, or B, delivered to me with features I paid for but can't use because there are no chips to power them, I'd want a substantial discount. (I know, wish in one hand and shit in the other and all that.) Thankfully I don't need one.

Automobile manufacturers may look to prolong the situation where demand outstrips supply. Even once supply chain shortages are alleviated, I believe (as others have said) that manufacturers will move to a S.O.P. where dealers will have an example of each model of a particular vehicle to test drive, and then the customer will be expected to order their car -- at MSRP or over, depending on demand.

If this proves correct, manufacturers will maximize profit. The dealers will still make out fine selling financing, products like extended warranties, and through their service departments.

quote:

Originally posted by BigSwede:
Intel is building a huge plant in OH I believe

Billions of our tax $$$ heading their way

Yep, it will be operational in 10 YEARS! You have environmental studies, public meetings, roads to be built, massive utilities to be ran, etc. I’ll be retired before it’s built and operational.

quote:

Originally posted by M'headSig:
Automobile manufacturers may look to prolong the situation where demand outstrips supply. Even once supply chain shortages are alleviated, I believe (as others have said) that manufacturers will move to a S.O.P. where dealers will have an example of each model of a particular vehicle to test drive, and then the customer will be expected to order their car -- at MSRP or over, depending on demand.

If this proves correct, manufacturers will maximize profit. The dealers will still make out fine selling financing, products like extended warranties, and through their service departments.

That works as long as no one breaks the rules. As soon as Kia starts putting cars on the lot, Honda starts losing sales. Ultimately I believe that the market will dictate how people want to buy cars. And however that is, I doubt it will be eight week wait times. We live in an instant gratification society.

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
1980 Cadillac ElDoroto = 3,800lbs
2022 BMW X3 M40i = 4,392

1980 Cadillac ElDoroto = 5.7L V8 with 170hp 0-6- in 11.4 sec
2022 BMW X3 M40i = 3L I6 382hp 0-60 in 4.4sec

-- 2000 Ferrari 550 Maranello 0-60 mph 4.1 So still, on par.

Is it a hybrid? I ask because there are quite a few cars with similar torque and horsepower numbers that weigh less that aren’t that quick. The 350hp, 350lbft of torque, 3,400lb Focus RS comes to mind at 4.8 seconds. For an automatic, the 2.3 liter EcoBoost Mustang at 3,500lbs and 5.0 seconds.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
1980 Cadillac ElDoroto = 3,800lbs
2022 BMW X3 M40i = 4,392

1980 Cadillac ElDoroto = 5.7L V8 with 170hp 0-6- in 11.4 sec
2022 BMW X3 M40i = 3L I6 382hp 0-60 in 4.4sec

-- 2000 Ferrari 550 Maranello 0-60 mph 4.1 So still, on par.

Is it a hybrid? I ask because there are quite a few cars with similar torque and horsepower numbers that weigh less that aren’t that quick. The 350hp, 350lbft of torque, 3,400lb Focus RS comes to mind at 4.8 seconds. For an automatic, the 2.3 liter EcoBoost Mustang at 3,500lbs and 5.0 seconds.

The BMW is a mild hybrid system, which doesn't really contribute to acceleration figures.

A couple of things are key factors - BMW massively underrates their engines. That B58 motor will do 382HP at the wheels at heat soak temperature. It's likely 450HP under more normal conditions.

Second, BMW's Xdrive system is a much more costly and efficient AWD system than the Focus RS. It is extremely efficient at putting power to the ground.