General Motors and other major automotive industry players are pressing the federal government to step in and try to remedy the ongoing global semiconductor microchip shortage before the situation worsens, Reuters reports.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group that represents a large number of major automotive manufacturers and suppliers, said in a letter this week that federal funding should be used “to build new capacity that will support the auto industry and mitigate the risks to the automotive supply chain,” evidenced by the current microchip shortage. The AAI represents General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota, Hyundai, BMW, Bosch, Cruise, Denso and many others.
In February, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to secure $37 billion in funding to help support local semiconductor chip manufacturing in the United States. The majority of semiconductor chips are currently made in Asian countries like China, Taiwan and Korea.
“I’m directing senior officials in my administration to work with industrial leaders to identify solutions to the semiconductor shortfall,” Biden said. “Congress has authorized a bill but they need $37 billion to make sure that we have this capacity. I’ll push for that as well.”
A global shortage of semiconductor chips, which are widely used in the various electric systems in modern-day automobiles, has reduced global vehicle production output in recent months. GM has been forced to cut production at a number of its facilities due to the chip supply constraints, including at the GM Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas and GM San Luis Potosi plant in Mexico.
The COVID-19 pandemic is partially to blame for the microchip shortage, bringing on production setbacks due to a lack of materials, parts and personnel. Rising demand for consumer electronics like laptops and tablets has also impacted the automotive industry’s ability to secure the microchips it needs.
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Comments
Spend taxpayer money and before it is up and running the Chinese will be dumping chips and none of the OEMs will buy the on-shore chips. Another Solyndra on steroids
budlar
Or we could just toss a couple of billion at Intel. Have them build their next chip factory in the U.S.
Intel being 4 chip process generations behind, literally blowing every single process upgrade since 2014, is part of the reason we got into this mess to begin with. Intel is literally shipping 7 year old technology today.
Sam
So what you’re saying is, It’s going to take Toyota about 15 years to advance enough for their vehicles to use today’s Intel chips.
No. Everybody is buying from Samsung and TSMC, not just automotive. Apple’s and AMD’s contracts (#1 and 2 customers) for TSMC capacity are pushing out everybody else. TSMC has directly said this, they’re prioritizing cutting-edge platforms and that automotive should have gotten on the bandwagon.
On top of that RAM and Flash are commodity parts that everybody fights over, albeit true at Samsung, but not at TSMC.
LG was a prominent Intel foundry customer back in 2016. They gave up and went to TSMC (which is their only choice since they don’t want to buy from Samsung for obvious reasons).
Second, Toyota IS using Intel chips today. Toyota, GM, FCA, Subaru, Tesla, among others use Intel Atom CPUs in infotainment. If you recall, GM is having a shortage on the surround camera system, which exactly do require high-end video processing. On top of that, driver assist (now required by law), and self-driving are using cutting-edge processes, MobilEye, for example, is on TSMC 7 nm.
GM closed the chip factory in Kokomo and now wants the government to bail them out.
FU Mary Barry.
You helped create this problem you deal with it.
Stockholders need to get rid of her before there is nothing left of gM.
All you mery Barry suck a— cronies can give this a thumbs down. Lol
Mary Barra knows what she’s talking about and is far smarter than you.
The Kokomo plant made high voltage power electronics, they are completely different than the chips that GM needs. The transistors they made at Fab III are about 80 times the size which they are making in Taiwan and South Korea. That means the chip in your ECU, instead of being a thumbnail, would be the size of a dinner plate.
We should be manufacturing all our own semiconductor chips here in the USA not to mention a boat load (no pun intended) of all other goods that we choose too relying on them for. We just keep relying on China, Korea and other Country’s for what we need here in the USA. If we were self- sufficient like we should be we would not be in the predicament we are in right now!!
Can’t thanks to unions, democrats, taxes and regulations.
Notice you just get downvotes with nobody pointing out how you are wrong. I can’t believe that 50% of the people that frequent this site are that foolish. Someone must be adding dislikes. I will
Note you should have just said “politicians” because most Republicans have enabled the situation just as much as Democrats. Heck, Nixon started the deal with the devil.
More like Can’t, thanks to different countries having different standards of living. Corporate greed dictates that factories be built where the cost of living is lowest. As long as you can pay a worker less in one country than you’d have to in another, you’re going to build your product in the first country. Corporate greed isn’t a bad thing, it keeps stockholders’ lights on. Shortsighted, unbridled greed, on the other hand….
Lol amazing how some have yet to pull there heads out of the sand. Lol
You know you’re getting old. When you say I remember back in my day. General Motors used to build their own computers. In the USA.
When IBM and AMD quit making their own chips, you know that small fry like GM don’t stand a chance.
Also, GM never designed their automotive chips. Motorola did that for them, something that survives to this day. (Motorola spun out Freescale which was bought by NXP)
Yes and should again! Kokomo Indiana plant is mostly empty. Would not take long to get it up and running again. Its already set up to build electronics for the most part.
No, completely different type of chip. GM’s plant made slow, huge, high voltage transistors for driving motors. There’s actually a ton of people making those, it’s not as hard.
They need ultra-small transistors on ICs for computer control now. There’s only two companies in the world who know how to make those chips (Samsung, TSMC). GM stands no chance.
maybe just in time inventory is not such a smart idea.
Seems that GM and others are all on board for green energy business as long as the government doles out money for chips etc. and gives rebates for EV purchases to support them and ensure their profitability. And the government is all on board to give out our tax dollars as they continually raise our taxes at the same time. Can any honest person deny that this is way to much government control? Government is not and never has been an efficient user of tax dollars and shouldn’t dictate winners and losers in the marketplace. This is all about government control and political power. The green energy movement is a great excuse for that control but when we realize that God is actually the One in control and follow His guidance then we will have a better world.
What’s more likely, that unchecked human activity is contributing to climate change, or that God is causing it as punishment for our sins?
God gave us free will. We suffer for our own poor judgement. God gave us a conscience. The well being of our great nation depended upon us to exercise it diligently. We failed God and our country – thereby, we failed ourselves. We dropped our principles. We dropped our pants. Nobody’s fault but ours.
So you’re going with the vengeful god punishing us sinners theory for what’s behind climate change. And here we are in the 21rst Century….
The rules of the universe didn’t suddenly change with the dawning of the 21st Century. The arrogance of technocracy has failed us. We are the custodians of our planet and our fate is in our own hands.
This is not about a vengeful God. God controls what happens to our universe and planet in the long run and won’t let it disintegrate until and when he is ready for that to happen. It is only our arrogance that allows us to think we control when earth will become uninhabitable for man. We should conserve and protect our resources that He gave us but not let that become our “God”.
God will clean up the environment, not some eco fascists who deny there is scientific proof that God exsits.
just remember the flood and noah ark
GM has unfortunately truly come to mean “Government Motors”. From the 2008 bailout to asking for further government subsidies for EVs and now requesting more government help to solve a supply chain issue. Can they do anything without government help? What’s next, a request for a government mandate to buy GM EVs?
BS. Could do it if they wanted to.
As a result of this shortage, I funded a team that has spent the past few months doing the R and D on fixing the shortage. Our software and electrical engineers, mostly from MIT have researched and sourced what is needed to build every type of chipset for the automotive industry.
However, there are many types and our biggest disconnect in this space is that when we reached out to automotive manufacturers, not one of them, so far has been willing to provide a sample of what they really need. If we knew the different type of chips they were actually short on, we would build them right here in Illinois.
For an Industry that is losing Billions a day, not one OEM has responded to our request as to which chip they really need. Our team almost feels like US Automotive manufacturers want to continue to being held hostage?
Someone please tell these gatekeepers to get their head out of their _ _ _, so we can get this turned around.