For those readers just rejoining society after living in a cave for the last year, headlines throughout 2021 have been dominated by the ongoing global microchip shortage. The latter has led to widespread production stoppages throughout the auto industry, including for General Motors. Now, SAIC-GM-Wuling has announced that it is developing its own microchips.
According to a report from Reuters, SAIC-GM-Wuling recently announced that has been developing its own microchips for use in automobiles since 2018. SAIC-GM-Wuling is the joint venture between General Motors, SAIC Motor Corp, and Guangxi Automobile Group. The group made the announcement during a recent industry conference, and did not specify if it was only designing the chips, or manufacturing them as well. However, SAIC-GM-Wuling did say it would seek to increase the use of locally sourced chips in the next five years, boosting cooperation with Chinese manufacturers in order to improve the quality and economy of its chip usage.
So far, the microchip shortage has resulted in an estimated production loss of 800,000 vehicles for General Motors. It’s believed that the GM Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas has been the hit the hardest with regard to production losses. The Fairfax facility produces the Cadillac XT4 crossover and Chevy Malibu sedan, and has been offline since February. That said, nearly all of GM’s production facilities have felt the impact of the global microchip shortage to some degree thus far.
In response to the shortage, General Motors has implemented a number of different strategies, including prioritization of its most popular models, namely its full-size SUVs and pickup trucks. General Motors also deleted certain features, such as Active Fuel Management and Dynamic Fuel Management from select GMC Sierra and Chevy Silverado models.
Interior of GM’s Arlington plant
What’s more, General Motors has implemented what is known as a “build-shy” strategy wherein certain models are produced in an incomplete state and stored as additional microchips are sourced, only to be completed once additional chips are secured.
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Comments
Good news, less reliance on outside suppliers
Bad news, anything electronic Chinese loves to “dail home” if it has an online connection..
Unfortunately it’s all about the bottom $ things will always come from China because of how cheap it is.
Look(search) before you pursue(engage) in that thought! Check out how they do business & you [ALL] make your own dictations! About “[CHINA]”!
Chinese labor isn’t cheap anymore!! The primary difference now is that they are willing to live in factory dorms and jump on a line at 3 AM with five minutes notice.
The Chinese government with help ventures like this access chips which may eventually aid US GM operations. With Buick being so popular, and the government’s desire to appear efficient, SAIC will get the chips it needs.
Wishing Biden with announce a public/private chip program that could return some chip production to the US which is a define national security issue not to mention good for the US consumer.
Did not GM make microchips in the U.S. in the 1980 – 90’s? It seems I I read that quite a long time ago.
They did. But so did IBM, AMD, Motorola (Freescale, NXP), Texas Instruments, HP (Avago, Broadcom), and many others. All of those companies quit, at least for the high-speed computer/digital ICs that are in trouble. Even Intel partially surrendered and started outsourcing some of their chips.
Because China is the best and it proves it with the amount of companies that are over there making things.
Which is wrong because they don’t make these chips in China (yet). They’re made in Taiwan and South Korea.
Taiwan which China claims is their own and soon enough will take it just like Hong Kong so yes for probably the next 6 months your statement is true.
Chinese threats against Taiwan are very good reasons not to do business in China or buy products that are manufactured there.
Good tell you’re president and congress this I am sure they will listen to you. 😉
Yes indeed. Both parties!
Treasonous globalist mono-party
ridiculous. china didn’t take hong kong. it was handed over to them as part of an agreement.
regarding taiwan, what is china waiting for? an auspicious meteor to give them the signal?
Lol you mean the agreement with the uk which the people of Hong Kong don’t like? And as far as Taiwan goes they already claim them along with the South China Sea. Soon they will take all of that. But by all means keep spewing that filth out of your mouth.
the year of the dragon, a comet will streaking across the sky … is that what xi is waiting for????
tomorrow, i’m claiming alaska as my personal fiefdom. i’ll let you know when i takeover.
of course people who are accustomed to liberties don’t want to live under chinese rule. duh.
You can’t claim anything but your welfare check you are a nobody and run nothing but your mouth so good luck trying to claim Alaska I’m sure those boys up there will have something for you when you decide to show up.
Hello Nathan, please avoid poisoning the athmosphere of this discussion round by derogatory personal attacks and insults.
Observer7 I will say what I please and if you don’t like it report it let the mods decide
@Nathan: You can say and write what you please when you sit alone in your toilet, but not in public.
This is a forum for a civil exchange of views and arguments, not a pi–ing contest.
Observer7 again if you don’t like it report it I can care less what you have to say.
@Nathan on 2021-09-18_06:22
The island Taiwan was always (as far as recorded history goes) part of China, was conquered by Japan in the 1895 war against China and ruled as a colony for 50 years, until the end of World War 2.
The “1943 Cairo Declaration” of POTUS Roosevelt, UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and RoC “Generalissimo” Chiang Kai-shek stipulated „that all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa, and The Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China.“ By Formosa they mean Taiwan.
Hongkong was taken by England in 1848 by military force, later also Kowloon, and the „New Territories“ (bordering on Shenzen) were „leased“ with an uneaqual contract for 99 years, until 1997. China and UK agreed to give all the robbed land back to China by that year.
As to how the USA agreed that there is only one China, including the island Taiwan, read the “Three Communiqués” agreed by the US and Chinese governments in the process of establishing diplomatic relations in the 1970ies.
You find both in the articles “1943 Cairo Declaration” and “Three Communiqués” in the english language en.Wikipedia dot org.
Again the people of Hong Kong do not want Chinese rule that’s a fact. A lot of other countries are worried about Chinese advances including the cowardly USA who just lost a 20 year war to sheep herders. As a matter of fact the terrorist regime of the USA is worried enough they continue to conduct flights over chinas land in the South China Sea even though they repeatedly get told to leave luckily after seeing how weak you are since the Afghanistan beat you China will start hopefully shooting your planes out the sky if you don’t leave on the first warning. Also if you don’t like what I say don’t reply to me. And I don’t need you to put the time I said something I have eyes and they also put that on each comment anyways thanks. Now go crawl back into your hole troll.
The people in Hongkong are Chinese and they live in China.
Hongkong is China, a part of China after more than 150 years of foreign occupation.
That a minority in Hongkong wants to rip this part of China out again, does not change that.
What do you think if some people in New Orleans would want to go back to French rule?
That was a very dumb comparison.
I will “try” to remember this globalist tripe when I am land-filling all the Chinese manufactured items that I have purchased which may looked good new, but only lasted a couple of years and have no service parts availability and no customer support.
You don’t have to try to remember anything just look on the back it tells you where it’s made.
You don’t need to look. You already know it isn’t made here.
Which should be a major concern for anyone who calls themself an American.
While on this subject, there was a GMA article last week about how GM had a plant stateside making chips as late as 2018, but decided to shudder production, and that plant is still sitting empty. Somebody needs to kick some butts Into gear up Michigan.
Not going to happen my man. It’s to expensive to make things in the USA why pay us workers $20+ an hour when they can keep things in China for I bet not even half that per employee.
Most chips are made in South Korea and Taiwan, not China.
Again Taiwan which China claims is theirs and will be soon enough when they take it. So I’m sure you are the exact same person as above so again for maybe 6 months your statement is true.
are you saying china invades taiwan in 6 months? yeah sure.
Who’s going to stop them lol? The USA who just got beat by a bunch of sheep hearders? 🤣
name a country that hasn’t had its ass handed to them. china knows a lot about that. cut down on the hot pots. they are frying your brain.
I can’t name one country that lost a 20 year over 2 trillion dollar war to sheep herders no that award solely belongs to the USA.
you just contradicted yourself genius.
Lol how’s that. Can you name another country that lost a war after 20 years that they spent over 2 trillion dollars on?
How does that make sense when they are losing billions in slow or lost production?
Well this isn’t complicated Brit, but how much money do you think people make over there? How much do you think they make here?
I realize it’s cheaper to have the chips made in the far east, but what I am trying to convey is GM is surely loosing more money by have their plants sitting idle when they could pay more for the chips and have full production at their plants. What is the actual price of a chip to produce 50-75 cents, an average vehicle would probably need 100 chips, even if the chips cost $4.00 to produce here it would add maybe $ 300-400 to the cost of a vehicle
Cadillac Brit’s opinion is correct. General Motors decisions to acquire many automotive parts companies during the early 20th Century were made not so much to get the cheapest part price but to secure parts production so General Motors could produce cars and trucks with no supply interruptions. Other factors in a make or buy decision are quality and control over technical innovation. For example, General Motors taking control over EV battery production is being driven out of concerns over secure source of parts, quality, and future technical innovation, not just cost.
Stop dick riding people
Nothing wrong with agreeing with a good point of view. Also there is nothing wrong with saying your comment is stupid, you must be a moron.
You did more then agree you were all up on that mans nuts. You even scrolled all the way down to the bottom in hopes someone had an opinion close to yours 🤣 👉👌
You just proved my point of you being a moron.
Right I’m the moron but yet you are seeking validation from complete strangers on the internet lol.
No wrong sorry. It would cost way more then that because of the hourly wage plus the crappy UAW and benefits plus retirement so sorry you are wrong. They are still making money now and the way the us does things if things get tight again for gm the big guy will bail them out. 🥰😉
You are correct, chips are cheap. The problem is the capital investment to make them. Much more than an auto assy plant, and it can have cleanliness issues and not come up in a timely fashion. A fab can easily run 20B now with a relatively short life. I worked for a defense contractor in the 80’s that had a fab. Even with crazy mil pricing (think 5 grand a part), they still could not make it work and closed their fab due to cost.
Automation makes hourly labor costs less important. Also, there are plenty of semiconductor plants in the U.S.A. and many more being planned even by a Taiwanese company. You don’t see Germany giving up on manufacturing and their labor, regulation, and energy costs are worse than the U.S.A..
Because Germany isn’t a bunch of sissy’s that’s why.
Being an arrogant, smart aleck is not the way to convince anyone of anything.
There is nothing arrogant about that statement. The USA has no spine I don’t care if you like it or not you lost to some sheep herders in Afghanistan lol.
Nathan, I will say to you what I’ve said to my incredibly brilliant son. Condescension is not a positive trait in anyone. Please try additional introspection to understand that you are indeed coming across that way.
Peace.
Salinarius thanks for sharing what you supposedly told “your brilliant son” although I don’t care. 2ND I know it’s hard to accept defeat but it’s ok nobody is laughing at the fact your country wasted 20 years and over 2 trillion $ just to get beat by sheep herders 😉
Oh I almost forgot peace 😘
Please don’t feed the Russian government trolls.
Lol right the Russian government is funding me to come on gm authority and comment 🤣 the douche of the day award goes to you my conspiracy ridden friend
There should be no argument to what you’re stating here as tough as it is for many to accept. Our government is incompetent and has sold us down the river.
The only thing scarier than the realization that our election process might be rigged is accepting that it may not be and the majority of Americans actually voted for this.
Try not even a 40th…..
It’s about time GM decides to “[step-up]”!
This shortage was planned by and done on purpose. Found out China purchased a chip maker in Germany and shut the manufacturer down. Can’t imagine why??
It’s ok the big guy won’t let gm go under 😉
Can you please sustantiate your claim or drop it as a baseless rumour.
Can you please not let random people on the internet that you don’t know and will never meet a day in your life bother you. Thanks.
Minimum wage is on average 24 yuan in China . That is roughly little over $3 usd .
Intel and apple have plants being built in the US and Intel state recently it will be back in the chip manufacturing business as they realized getting out of it was a mistake. They also said they will work with other manufactures to build their chips also. Gm closed chip plant in indiana, the one that built the ventilators in 2017 because they were told there was plenty of compacity in the world and the cost to upgrade was not going to pay off. They can’t bring it back online because all the machines have been sold and you have to have clean plant to do it. A chip plant is not a easy startup and is very expensive to do and return on investment may never happen.
You don’t know what chips were made in the Indiana plant and if those are the same chips that are in short supply now.
Those same sheep headers turned back the USSR. Something that no other country in the area had done up to that point. If you are going to say something make sure you know what you are talking about.
This in no way ameliorates the shocking degree of US Government incompetence that turned the withdrawal from Afghanistan to an epic Black Comedy the likes of which our once proud nation has never seen. Eighty-One Billion Dollars is a whole bunch of taxpayer money squandered not to mention these self-proclaimed humanitarian nincompoops all but guaranteeing (or in automotive terms, turbo-supercharging) ongoing human casualties and suffering the likes of which could’ve only been imagined in the very worst case doomsday scenario – a scenario of absolute failure – consistent with the Biden–Harris administration’s similarly dismal record at the southern border and policy-wise in general.
Democrat incompetence is spiraling the US headlong into Third World territory so quickly that the border crisis may soon resolve itself as would-be immigrants seeking the good life start to realize they might be better off toughing it out at home.
The facts:
One chip supplier in Taiwan males 80% of the worldwide demand for chips. Not just for cars, but for Xboxes and appliances, etc. It is named TSMC.
Biden gave $52 billion to 3 companies this summer to make chips in the USA. They are USA based Intel. Korean based Samsung, and Taiwan based TSMC. TSMC just announced a $17 billion plan for a new chip plant in Arizona. FYI $52 billion split 3 ways is $17 billion.
Only one company in the World makes the chip making machines that can make these new advanced automotive chips, and they are in the Netherlands.
GM did make automotive chips in the 80s and 90’s in Kokomo, Indiana, at their Delco Electronics massive complex. They have a clean room in Kokomo, that has 17 huge fans, each one big enough to inflate the old Colts inflatable Hoosier Dome (replaced by retractable roof Lucas Stadium). That clean fab room actually forces dust and contaminates to float upwards into ceiling filtration system. It also required anyone entering to go through a clean chamber and wear what looked like an astronauts suit. GM Kokomo (Delco, Delphi, GMCH) once employed over 10,000 people. Today, it is just a few hundred, and will likely close within the year.