Are some of the auto plants still shut down because of chip shortages?

[Quavodus]

Just wondered if some are still down. Looks like it might be a good idea to start making most everything here.

[peejman]

Yes. But making things here won't matter when we don't have the raw material.  The items in short supply typical come from Asia and Russia. 

[jhc77]

Here in Spring Hill, 9/20 is when they will restart the plant.

[Grunt67]

45 minutes ago, jhc77 said:

Here in Spring Hill, 9/20 is when they will restart the plant.

They may do like everyone else. Assemble & park 'em.

[Quavodus]

Ford has a s---load parked.

[Erik88]

Many of the car lots here in Knoxville are real low on inventory. An employee at Toyota of Knoxville told me they their inventory was 60% lower than normal. 

[Grayfox54]

Last I heard Ford, GM and several of the foreign makers were all shut down. Many of the chips are produced in Japan and several Asian countries that are badly crippled by the Covid. 

[MacGyver]

A chip foundry is a 10-15 billion dollar investment - and at best 5 years before you fab your first chips. 

Some of us have argued for years about the national security issues associated with offshoring it.  The problem is - for Dell or whoever - the decision to offshore makes total business sense (or at least it did.)

If you want to move it back here - you’re going to need deep pocketed investors, knowledge that we’ve big chunks of, and years.

And you still need chips in the meantime.

There really aren’t many easy answers.

It’ll take government level investment - and there are a whole lot of folks who aren’t really interested in seeing the government spend money on much. 

[Grunt67]

Folks loved the cheaper off shore prices, now they ask why can't we make that here. Well, because you didn't want to pay the price.

Careful what you wish for.

[MacGyver]

Asus wouldn’t exist if Dell hadn’t offshored production in a series of steps that I’m sure made complete sense to their management at the time.  Now you can buy an Asus laptop for a lot less than a similarly spec’d Dell.

Everything has a cost. 

[jhc77]

2 hours ago, Grunt67 said:

They may do like everyone else. Assemble & park 'em.

The two spots for "overflow" that I know of are empty. I think the battery plant construction slowed a bit too. Haven't been by there in a few weeks.

Edited September 16, 2021 by jhc77
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[Hozzie]

There is an upside.  My new Suburban doesn't have that stupid auto start/stop because they don't have chips to run it.  

[OldIronFan]

Auto makers did it to themselves. They jacked up the supply chain, lowered volumes or outright canceled outstanding purchase orders. No surprise that when they said "oh never mind all that, we need those chips after all" the chip manufacturers of said chips told them to go pound sand. 

Most of those chip plants are still running full capacity or close to it. They are producing chips for things other than cars at this point. 

In late 2019 when I was still dealing with Chinese made import product we were already having supply chain issues. Most of those issues were solved and flow was back to "normalish" before Covid really even got going here in 2020. 

[OldIronFan]

10 hours ago, Hozzie said:

There is an upside.  My new Suburban doesn't have that stupid auto start/stop because they don't have chips to run it.  

/Thread drift/ - I never have understood why people hate this so much. I have driven dozens of cars/trucks with auto start /stop and it never bothers me. Only one ever seemed to be less than smooth and slightly obtrusive but that was a dodge, I expect poorly engineered and built crap from them. 

[A.J. Holst]

19 hours ago, Erik88 said:

Many of the car lots here in Knoxville are real low on inventory. An employee at Toyota of Knoxville told me they their inventory was 60% lower than normal. 

Driving by on the interstate, they look out of business and could hold sporting events in that giant parking lot

[No_0ne]

22 hours ago, Quavodus said:

Just wondered if some are still down. Looks like it might be a good idea to start making most everything here.

Yes, and it looks like more will follow before the chip industry catches up ...

[Dirtshooter]

I have a solution, it is called 1 coil, 1 set of points and a condenser in a vintage distributor. But that would be too simple and we couldn't pump all that money into china if we did that. Or go to an old school diesel with no electronics and a mechanical pump like Cummins had. Throw all the electronic, digital, computerized crap in the dumpster!!!

Edited September 16, 2021 by Dirtshooter