Auto chip shortages have prevented carmakers from making over ten million cars. The microcontroller shortage after the Renesas fire in Japan and the COVID lockdowns in Southeast Asia caused most of the problems in 2021. Toyota is reducing its 2022 car production target to 8.5 million cars. This Toyota target is down from 9 million in January 2022 and down from 10.7 million in 2019, 9.2 million in 2020
Tesla can use more sources for its chips because Tesla programmers can write firmware in 2 weeks to let them use different suppliers for different chips.
There are several major categories of auto chips. There are microcontrollers (MCUs), analog, sensors, power chips, logic and memory.
Microcontrollers for powertrain, chassis & safety, infotainment, body & convenience, ADAS/autonomy
(15 to 100 per car)
Analog for power management, BUS transceivers, RF, radar, motor drivers, display drivers, LED drivers, etc. (hundreds per car)
Power discrete for xEV, chassis, powertrain (tens per car)
High end chips for LIDAR and self driving and driver assist AI.
Tesla created a unified computer architecture used in its cars. This reduced the number of MCUs needed from 80 to about 20.
Tesla has their own design for their self driving chip.
Analog chips shortages could last into 2024. The chip shortages in 2022 and 2023 could mean another 15 million cars are not able to be built. There was 71 million instead of 80 million cars build in 2021 and this could be the same in 2022 and another 5 million cars are not able to be built in 2023.
SOURCES= Evannex
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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