Fire takes out Japanese chip plant, owner Renesas warns of more silicon shortages A fire has damaged a fabrication plant belonging Japanese chipmaker Renesas. The fire broke out last Friday, 19 March, in the N3 plant at Renesas Naka factory, around 100km north-east of Tokyo. Renesas says 600m2, around 5 per cent of the total clean room area, was burned. Eleven pieces of equipment, or around 2 per cent of …
If there is a shortage of chips, maybe this is an opportunity to go back to producing cars which are just cars. Ads for small cars now don't feature driving at all, it's all about how you can hook up your phone to the entertainment system to continue consuming social media.
Safety would be greatly improved by dropping distracting touchscreens and going back to tactile buttons and dials, removing "driving assistance functions" which encourage you to lose attention behind the wheel such maintaining lanes, and autopilots which aren't.
Get rid of all that superfluous stuff, and there would be enough chips for the essential function of controlling the engine.
Going further, I often wonder if it's still possible to build a (road legal) car that contains no electrics, let alone electronics. I cannot think of anything in particular that would be impossible: compression ignition systems exist, pumps can be geared to the shaft, lights of various colours can be generated with combustion, etc. etc.
Something to investigate if I ever acquire undeserved billions, I think the "Ampa" would be a good name for it.
(A/m/Pa = Amps per metre per Pascal = inverse Tesla)
Cranks weren't that innocent - my granddad used to be the guy to crank most of the buses in the morning as he was one of the few who had the knack of making the full turn instead of not quite making it and so getting a whack back from the engine (even though those diesels didn't quite have the compression they now have). Apparently breaking an arm was a common hazard.
I think that's known as a kinetic drive :).
You made me recall a very old prank program where one of the pranks was to remove the engine from a car and let it coast into a petrol station, then ask the attendant to check the oil level (yes, this is many years ago). I think they had another modified vehicle (I think a mini) which had extra tanks so it took about 4x the amount of petrol to top it up, making the pump attendant very worried and walking around to find any leaks.
Ah, the days of innocent, fun practical pranks..
For no electrics, you'll need an old diesel vehicle, early 80s or older, with mechanical fuel injection.
In fact, it will also need a hand crank for starting.
A Land Rover series III may fit your needs and should even remain serviceable after a nuclear EMP event, at least until you need to order parts and find that ebay has been incinerated.
It is most unlikely that any new vehicle with that configuration could be road legal due to current emissions standards.
Not all of the additions were superfluous dodads. Tactile buttons and dials (without electronic controls behind them) mean heavy and bulky wiring harnesses (and high current switches often have lower reliability than electronic controls). Pull out electronics from the engine and emissions will shoot up.
You are very right about the loss of safety with touchscreens. Human interface design in automobiles should be about safety, not pizzazz. If you have to punch soft buttons on a screen to do something, you are devoting more cognitive energy to the controls than if you have a dedicated button or switch. That's fine for setting the clock or pairing your phone, it's not ok for tasks you may do while driving. Most auto makers have forgotten that.
Chrysler and Mercedes are big offenders (they still seem to share some design decisions years after the divorce). Chrysler Pacifica, for example has three round dials in close proximity. One is the gear selector (cause a lever moving back and forth is soooo 20th century), one is the radio volume, and one is the fan speed. Mercedes went on a kick where their vehicles sprouted numerous extra stalks from the steering column.
The Naka plant was wrecked by the 2011 earthquake, was working for Renesas at the time, it was an amazing recovery that did huge fundamental damage to the company (as it revealed that Renesas were single-source, single factory for a lot of the automotive supply chain).
https://www.eetimes.com/image-gallery-recovering-renesas-naka-fab/#
I'm sure they'll get it back up and running pretty quickly.
In this world of technology and how these building are constructed as well security. This is obvious an inside job and who is to fail and who is to succeed and China is the only other country to benefit from these fires. It is also very suspicious that the AKM fire happens and then lies then a week later a fire starts in another Tokyo plant and the same hr one in Taiwan. Now China is threatening an invasion of Taiwan. This stuff just dopes not happen and Japan needs to come clean as to how it started and publish the news also as well Taiwan.
This is not just a US or UK issue rather than a World Wide issue and the finding must come out.
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