By Andrew Marsh, 01st October 2021
The OEMs did not keep orders in place throughout the pandemic, but other industries which use the same type of semiconductors not only did keep their orders but had product booms too. Add to this the fires / collapse in manufacturing at specific sites that specialised in this older type of chip technology and hey presto, there is a problem.
Note higher end ‘chips’ did not suffer this supply issue.
OEMs have known for some time that they need to use more advanced semiconductors, to mitigate constraints in legacy manufacturing capacity. One pandemic, one fire and one state-wide electricity system failure was enough to force the issue.
That’s why the fix may take some years to work through, since the solution requires brand new electrical architectures for existing models. It remains to be seen how many, if any OEMs take this step.