Whenever automakers get their hands on chip supplies, the more expensive vehicles are first in line – NXP Car makers are shutting down factories because of semiconductor shortages – and whatever chips they can get their hands are going into more expensive vehicles. "We have seen multiple OEMs prioritize to production of premium vehicles, which require upwards of twice the semiconductor content from NXP and others," said Kurt …
Well.. Some people find it useful to have a car with a working fuel injection / ignition system.
It is, off course, possible to solve the issue electzro-mechanically, but your car would definately suffer from taking such a step backwards.
Oh.. And many safety features, such as airbags would also have to be removed.
But *most* of the chips[1] are nothing to do with running the engine or the brakes and are there merely to provide a cheap differentiator so that the manufacturer can stick a different label on the back of the car and twenty grand on the ticket.
A no-brainer for the bean counters and the sales droids, but finding a poverty-spec car without all the automated driver aid bollocks is becoming more and more difficult.
[1] One chip for the ECU, one chip for the ABS, one chip for the airbags, one chip for the remote locking and windows. All of which can be done with eight bit 1990's technology. Everything else is fluff. But conveniently expensive fluff.
As a Reg reader I'd have hoped you would have a better understanding that it's not a simple/singular 'chip'. Everything within a car is a module. Entertainment module, ABS module, climate control module, airbag module. They all communicate with each other over a network (CAN) like a LAN, feeding each other telemetry. My cruise control wouldn't activate due to a defective switch behind my clutch pedal for instance - They're all extremely tightly intertwined in any modern vehicle and you can't just randomly leave certain bits out.
My business partner ordered an A class Mercedes in February and received it last month without the augmented sat-nav (Gimmicky anyway if you ask me) and no ability to press the 'SOS' button above your head in case of an emergency/breakdown. Mercedes offered to retrofit the components in the future, but still delivered the car regardless.
I ordered an Audi A3 (Not a premium vehicle, really..) in February and have been advised the components for the stereo unit and the reversing camera are currently unavailable therefore they won't deliver the vehicle until it's complete. I've heard stories of VW releasing cars in Europe with no stereo which quite frankly, sounds ridiculous..
All this seems to have highlighted is how small the pool of available semiconductor manufacturers is globally. On the flip-side, it's hardly worth building a fab in the midst of the chaos as by the time it's operational things will have subsided. Catch 22 I guess...
"My cruise control wouldn't activate due to a defective switch behind my clutch pedal for instance - They're all extremely tightly intertwined in any modern vehicle and you can't just randomly leave certain bits out."
But that begs the question as to why there is a switch behind your clutch pedal in the first place. It's just bad design that random bits of th ecar won't work when other random bits also don't work or are missing. And anything related to engine, throttle, steering control etc should have a high resilience, and therefore not depend on any other random chips being there or not.
why there is a switch behind your clutch pedal in the first place
So the computer can shut off cruise, and not over-rev your engine when you push the clutch.
I assume the defective switch is failed to always-on, so of course cruise doesn't activate.
Isn't that rather obvious?
Others have covered the need for the switch.
Oh, and the clutch probably has two switches, one for the start of travel and a second for clutch disengagement. The latter is used for engine load estimation for emissions control.
The switch itself is almost certainly using a Hall Effect device in place of mechanical contacts. That device is a complex chip with thousands of transistors. The same is true for dozens of other switches and sensors in the engine and body. The door locks, power windows, HVAC system, fluid level detection, etc all likely have Hall Effect devices. And this is just one aspect of chip use that people overlook, thinking that they are "just switches".
As a Reg reader I'd have hoped you would have a better understanding that it's not a simple/singular 'chip'.
Of course I know that. But I also know that it doesn't have to be like that. Certainly they're modules connected by a bus, but they could equally well be stand alone modules... indeed, until the 2000's that was pretty much how it was done.
For example, to use your example of a cruise control: it's basically a simple servo control designed to keep the speed (not engine) at a constant speed. It needs three inputs only - a signal from the speed sensor, a signal from the brake pedal, and a signal from the clutch pedal. Its output is either a DC override of a fly-by-wire throttle, or on an older car, a direct drive to the accelerator cable mechanism.
That's it. It has no need to know whether the lights or on, or that it's the matching-numbers part for that vehicle. It doesn't need to talk to the door locks or the rear lights; it doesn't need to know the steering angle or even whether its raining. That's not it's job.
Even without adding fluff (what is the point of lane following or vehicle-in-front-speed limiting, for a driver who is alert and knows how to drive? And if you are going to add the fluff, how come in a world in which built in satnav is common, so the vehicle systems are aware of local speed limits, do cruise controls allow you to set and maintain a speed greater than the limit?) using a serial bus to talk to an on-off device like a mechanical switch is poor design: there are too many steps in the way of a critical signal. I appreciate that the use of Canbus switching can save weight of copper cables, but it's not a universal panacea.
And when someone is trying to sell me a car on the grounds that it has better internet than another model... well, I guess I'm not their target market.
My wife drives what's currently her second small Suzuki. I've never been able to work out the exact logical that determines when you can unlock the drivers door/all doors/boot in relation to each other.
One of the reasons why I didn't buy a third Subaru was the fact that it had the stupidly unnecessary electric handbrake. I did read up about it, however. AFAICR the logic inputs operating it included the seat-belt switch.
Ha ha...
We have a Suzuki Swift as a courtesy car at the moment and I equally have no idea how you get the various openings to open when you want them to.
It is also a manual hybrid. If you believe the silly display then it has never reached full charge. If you take your foot of the accelerator it promptly slows (as in braking effect, not coasting) up because it thinks it can now charge. It only appears to use the battery for power when you accelerate really hard and never uses electric only.
Bluntly a total and utter waste of motor, generator, chips and resources.
"It needs three inputs only - a signal from the speed sensor, a signal from the brake pedal, and a signal from the clutch pedal."
And the enable/disable/set switch, and you may have a switch to increase the set speed without having to reset it, also possibly a coast switch. For outputs you will have a dash light to give feedback on the current state. So lots of wires in older vehicles, and non-simple CAN bus integration with other modules such as the steering wheel buttons and dashboard in newer vehicles.
True. I was considering only its actual operation. But even then, you need one output to an (unnecessary in my opinion) light on the dash, and a couple of wires to make it faster or slower. But the point remains, integrating canbus left right and centre is not the only way and in many ways not necessarily the best way.
It's also receiving a signal from the throttle pedal to allow you to choose to go faster then revert to the set speed, though perhaps you covered that as an output. In addition to the brake pedal the automatic collision avoidance breaking also turns off cruise control and if you car has the option the cruise control speed can be automatically modified by the signal from the radar indicating the distance to the car in front. Additionally the set speed is sent to the instrument cluster so that you can see that the cruise control is on and the selected speed. Speed is also "controlled" to some extent by things like "key present" security so along the way the CAN bus becomes much more practical than stand alone modules.
"Even without adding fluff (what is the point of lane following or vehicle-in-front-speed limiting, for a driver who is alert and knows how to drive?"
If the driver is alert and knows how to drive, why do you need cruise control in the first place?
Those reasons you're thinking of? That's what the "fluff" is for.
ECUs take much more than "one chip" and require much more processing power than an 8-bit micro.
Squeezing out performance, reliability, and emissions concerns takes a lot of brains in the engine.
I have a fairly old (model year ca. 2008) ECU on my desk that has 20 ICs onboard (not counting the discrete SOT23 transistors). Two of them are 32-bit NXP microcontrollers. Several others are bespoke ICs from Bosch.
To run the engine, this ECU will communicate with a throttle controller (probably a dedicated CAN IC plus bespoke IC for control), an ignition module (~5 ICs), a transmission control module (~8 ICs, IIRC), and various sensors that have 0-2 ICs (crank sensor, cam sensor, inlet air temp, exhaust temp sensors, O2 sensors, MAF sensor, etc.).
That's "just" a gasoline engine. Diesel gets more demanding to control. (Not my field, but gas is pretty much "watch MAF and O2, adjust fuel timing to average just LOP", diesel is "watch the chatacteristics of every injector as they fire, adjust as required per this fuel map", both get more complicated when you consider emissions).
Misc controls on the body and chassis can be done with one custom chip plus a CAN transceiver chip (CAN transceivers are often dedicated chips, I'm guessing it's easier to make them more rugged when they're built on a separate wafer from the processor). Alternatively, you can do a combo platter of CAN transceiver, general-purpose microprocessor, plus drive hardware like h-bridge drivers.
Anon just to be safe, I'm not spilling any company secrets, but corp. gets touchy about controller discussions...
ECUs, anti-lock brakes and airbags are autonomous units that aren't integrated with the infotainment/satnav systems (unless you count indications on the infotainment screen as essential). (FWIW my motorcycle has fuel injection and anti-lock brakes....just about everything has now.)
I'm familiar with a 'clutch' because I'm old but you'd be surprised how many people in the US cannot work a stick shift. They're kind of redundant, doubly so with all the electrics now out there. I'd regard a manual transmission and automated driving aids like cruise control (and especially adaptive cruise control) as incompatible.
What's annoying about it - Stop at lights, put yourself in neutral, release clutch, engine cuts.
Put clutch in to engage gear, engine starts so it's ready by the time you can drop the clutch to start moving.
Or does your car do something different to every vehicle I've been in with it?
I assume you've never been in a vehicle where the battery's shit the bed, and you're a college student too poor/busy to replace it until the end of the week and you still need to get to school.
So the engine stops, and the battery's too duff to restart it. You're fucked. In the middle of the intersection. With horns blaring behind you. I would think that'd be annoying.
That sounds like a faulty system (or badly designed in that car model).
All the cars I've driven that had auto-start-stop, monitor the battery charge level, and if below a certain level (and also when the engine was cold) the auto-start-stop would disable itself. Only once the engine was warmed up, and there was enough charge in the battery, would it enable itself.
Apart from the possibilities of sudden 'borked' syndrome there's also the long term mechanical issues with stop start as I've not seen many stop-start cars with electric oil or water pumps, (beefier starter motors - yes).
The first stop-start car I drove (rental) put me off it forever, as I left the motorway* and came to a stop at the lights the engine cut out, cutting the oil coolant to the turbo bearings and water circulation to the alloy cylinder head**. I vowed never to buy anything 2nd hand with stop-start.
* after two hours driving at the limit with engine & turbo merrily spinning away.
** both lead to a rapid localised temperature spike which cooks the oil now static in the turbo bearing (still spinning at near 100k RPM) to several hundred degrees and puts stress on all the structures - especially the nearby plastic ones.
> cutting the oil coolant to the turbo bearings and water circulation to the alloy cylinder head
That's on purpose, as the goal here is to sell more, and if your engine breaks down after a year or two it's pure profit for the manufacturer. New car or spare parts, it's fresh money you else wouldn't had to give them before quite a while.
My car's (10+ years old now) instruction manual explicitly says to wait about 10 seconds before switching off the engine after stopping, because of those precise reasons (mostly the turbo). When I first heard about this stop-start malarkey I knew immediately what the purpose was. Definitely not pollution, as starting pollutes more than idling at a traffic light.
I'm always worried that stop start causes extra engine wear.
All those finely ground bearings require a certain amount of oil pressure to protect and cushion them from the huge forces of exploding petrol / diesel (enough to move a ton or two of car rather briskly) and also stop them moving metal to metal. The pressure is created by pumps driven off the engine (actually part thereof) and dissipates when the engine stops. So every time you start it there is extra wear. This becomes much worse if you load the engine before oil pressure has had chance to build e.g. from a "clutch down - start - go" cycle.
Start stop is really a bit of a con. Its greenwash for the motor industry to show government that they are reducing the emissions from their vehicles, while at the same time hiding that they are consuming more resources.
Snap! just posted similar above.
I suspect that far fewer stop-start motors will reach the milages easily obtained by the last generation of 'traditional' cars from the turn of the century. They'll be economic write offs due to induced early failure in very expensive to fix items, I'd also guess that electronic failure will scrap many for the same reason.
I think that in most cases, the core mechanicals of cars are not what dooms them in the end, or has not been for the last few decades. In N.Europe, it is usually rust.
What it is where I live (Algarve) I don't know. I have a 2005 Accord Petrol, it has done 238000km and engine and (aut) gearbox are doing just fine. Suspension is clearly not new anymore. Electrics have some peculiarities, central locking is not reaching passengers door and the display showing interior temp and radio station only works now and then. But it starts and handles just fine.
My inlaws' Clio is 20, has only done 130000 and is also fine, apart from the clock.
You could argue the engines/boxes are too good for the rest of the car.
It's a bit off topic, but the residual oil film provides plenty of engine bearing protection during start-stop operation. As long as there is oil on the surfaces, the oil creates its own hydrodynamic pressure so there is essentially no bearing wear. Think of the oil pump as providing fresh, cool oil rather than creating the pressure that separates the surfaces.
This is less of a coast and more of a preparation to stop; in the last second or so the car is still moving while the gear is deselected and the clutch released. It may be even after the actual stop that the engine is turned off (though it does it once the speed is below a couple of meters a second).
The issue is not that the engine stops, but that it takes so long to restart if it's still in the process of stopping. It has to finish stopping before it will start again.
As I said, it doesn't happen often, but when it does it's a surprise.
Modern fuel injection systems will completely cut off the fuel on the overrun - engine engaged in gear but no throttle input. By coasting to a stop, either with gearbox in neutral, or clutch depressed, you are just wasting fuel. So wait until the last possible moment before actuating the clutch, and it also saves a bit of pad wear by using engine braking.
And some cars make it look like that.
My car for instance keeps the brake lights on, even though the handbrake is applied.
It applies the handbrake automatically, and releases it automatically, but it keeps the blooming brake lights on blinding anyone behind me... (I haven't checked what it does if I manually trigger the handbrake).
"one should engage the hand brake whien stationary"
I never heard of this before. Sure, I use the hand brake when parked, but not in traffic: not at a stop sign, or a yield (imagine trying to enter a rotary with the parking brake engaged) or in the daily tailback during rush hour.
People already think I'm nuts for driving standard in southern California traffic. If I started rowing the parking brake every time I pop the clutch in a tailback, there would be a mercy killing.
Only if you leave it on for an extended period (like overnight). usually there isn't a separate set of pads that the handbrake uses, so it's no different from leaving your foot on the brake in terms of pad behaviour (just less risk in terms of foot cramp/day dreaming/blinding other road users)
The handbrake is a simple device to hold the car still without blinding the motorist behind you with your very high intensity brake lights.
If you are stopped for any length of time (i.e. probably not a stop sign, but certainly for traffic lights) then use of the handbrake used to be strongly advised. But then driving used to be about making *safe* progress and looking out for other road users.
Now it seems to an all out arms race to blind everyone else on the road because they've just blinded you with their ridiculously overpowered and point source lights.
I tend to sit on the brake pedal for the simple reason that my Astra has a little button + motor for the handbrake. Yes it auto-releases but I consider each application one less of its X lives before something breaks after each Whiirrr - clunk cycle.
Besides hill start assist with the foot brake has pretty much killed off the hand brake.
This is something that differs from country to country. In Denmark the handbrake at traffic light was not a thing, never mentioned at driving lessons and not part of the test. We were also allowed to cross our hands at the wheel!
I only heard of the alternative traditions when I moved to the UK
We had start/stop in our last car.
It was good until the battery failed while I was at the head of the queue at some lights.
Had to get pushed to the side - which was difficult with no power-steering.
Brittania Rescue came to my aid with a portable power-pack and got me home and we switched off the system. My local dealer couldn't believe the cost of the replacement battery!
Next door neighbour has (had - he's got rid of it) a van with stop-start. He had to replace the battery twice in one year - that's why he sold it.
When I was growing up we had a guy come round each Saturday in his Volvo estate selling eggs + potatoes (we used to call him the "egg man" obviously)
His day consisted of stop, switch off - visit a couple of customers, drive maybe 100-150 yards, stop, switch off etc.
Knackered his battery on a routine schedule.
"...selling cars with dummy chips that it could ultimately replace with real chips, and GM, which has removed features like auto start-stop due to chip shortages"
If the chips are for 'nice-to-haves', selling cars at a discount without them + adding them back in for free at a later date would keep most customers interested, although cutting into already fine margins for manufacturers. Or maybe, as with start-stop comments above, some customers are happy to get the car without the feature at all, even without a discount.
I'd prefer it with the discount.
I wonder if manufacturers might treat this as a learning opportunity. The "features" range from "I want" through "nice to have" to "won't buy a car with it". If enough customers make retro-fitting an opportunity to select the combination of features they want the manufacturers might continue with it. However realising what's happening would require some intelligence in the marketing departments so it seems unlikely.
I understand that manufacturers have dramatically reduced the number of options (into "packages") because regulations (themselves driven by very reasonable desires to reduce emissions) require that every different combination of options go through separate emissions testing to come up correct emissions numbers for the car as sold.
I was told that by someone in the motor trade - I don't know whether it is actually true. As a former technical marketing person, I also see that "bundling" drives higher prices as people pay for features they won't use.
> "bundling" drives higher prices as people pay for features they won't use
Definitely. Some features I really don't see anybody ever wanting to pay money for, but by bundling them with something essential (like air-conditioning), they still can bill the sucker good money for them. Tie a bunch of those with every essential/desirable feature and ka-ching! Profit!
Again on my (deliberately) poverty spec Renault: the rear hatch release does not operate from the key fob. The key fob has the button, the button is operational (as indicated by the lights operating when a signal is received, and the hatch is released by a servo klunk driven by the button by the handle.
Which rather suggests that all the hardware is in place, and this friendly function is actually disabled by software. And that strikes me as annoying.
"Which rather suggests that all the hardware is in place, and this friendly function is actually disabled by software. And that strikes me as annoying."
I suspect the same in my base-trim Honda Fit (Jazz). There is exactly one setting for "intermittent wipers." In my car, that setting is a fixed delay ~3 seconds. In the higher trim, it uses the light sensor on the dash to regulate frequency. Both trim lines have the same wiper control, both have the light sensor (used for my automatic headlamps), but only the higher trim uses logic for the wipers.
I'm not a car nut, but stuff like this makes me want to get in there and fix things.
> If enough customers make retro-fitting an opportunity to select the combination of features they want the manufacturers might continue with it.
Come on, that would only work in a fictitious world where manufacturers actually cared about what potential customers want or need.
In the real world "features" are mostly excuses to bill the sucker customer. Which is the reason they are only sold in "packages": If you want A, you also need to pay for useless or even unwanted B, C, D, E and F. Through the nose.
About the last thing I'd want in any vehicle is a >>combustible<< engine.
Combustion should remain inside an internal combustion engine, which is itself incombustible. It this condition is not met, an external conflagration is the expected outcome.
yes ^
We have 52 weeks delivery quoted on some ordinary FPGAs from the authorised disties. But there are hundreds of thousands of them from the www.buythefpgaswevehoarded.cn guys, as you say at eye watering markups.
So maybe get back to appropriate technology for some applications? Now, where's my Texas TTL data book....
The assumption is that they are selling them. Now if the mark-ups are that much, they are probably not because manufactures cannot afford the overheads.
One would hope that they will end up having dump the prices as they must have loans to service to have bought them in the first place.
A bit like the chimps that bought all the toilet rolls and hand sanitiser 18 months ago and then found they could not actually sell them for the 10x profit they thought was reasonable.
Don't think that they have those chips in stock.
Most sellers are simply playing the middleman game. They'll take your money and then look for a supplier that can deliver at a lower price. If they can't make a profit, they'll delay hoping that their price will drop. Eventually they'll refund your money. Or not.
Back in the MOSFET shortage days I repeatedly received counterfeit parts, re-marked lower spec parts that superficially appeared to work. There are plenty of stories of people getting 'factory sealed' reels of more complex parts that were perfectly marked but were something completely different, sometimes even having the wrong number of pins. That evolved into the first few parts on the reel being genuine to pass inspection, with the rest being bogus.
I´ve an MGB with zero electronics but loads of electrics, an ancient Jaguar ditto, a 94 XJS with a modicum of simple i/c´s, an early S Type which has some but still too many and a modern car, a Seat Ateca which is loaded to the gunnels with pointless stuff that I never use, it's got a screen like Android on steroids, I can change all sorts of stuff, use cameras and motion sensors and it's all pretty much unused and is at worst a huge distraction when driving.
I much prefer the classics to drive, no bleeps sirens and bongs, they´re just fast, comfortable, affordable vehicles that due to their age are now very green.
Modern motors are ridiculous.
Given the original Top Gear definition of gearhead, I'll see your MGB and raise you two Alfas and two FIATs.
Yes, on the right road with the right traffic and the right weather (not to mention the lack of police) my first, an Alfa Spider Veloce, was a blast to drive. OTOH, if it was cold the manual choke could be fiddly and if the weather turned, putting up the manual roof and rolling up all the manual windows was a pain. The worst problem was when an oncoming driver forced me too far over onto the gravel shoulder and the lack of a limited slip diff caused it to spin. Bye bye Alfa.
Later, real life intervened. I got married and the wife nixed a manual, I got kids and rear seats became a thing. And worst, I needed a car that spent more time in city traffic than on country roads
I'm currently driving a Hyundai Veloster Turbo (which I heartily recommend) with all the bells and whistles and I've come to appreciate them. They don't make the car more fun to drive (except the Sport Mode and the flappy paddle DSG) but they do make it less of a pain to drive in traffic. They also make it safer to drive in traffic.
If I were rich enough (and had a big enough garage) I'd consider getting an occasional weekend car but I'm not and I'm living with what I have.
We have a 1996 Mazda B2500 pickup. The electronics are limited to the digital clock and the radio/cassette.
Construction not dissimilar to 60es cars: leaf springs and stiff axel at the back, discs and wishbones at the front. Only it is with torsion springs.
Outside urban areas the big asthmatic diesel is so noisy the radio is pointless.
> if the electronics aren't available, features are simply removed
It might be the right time for me to buy a new car...
Such an opportunity won't present itself again I'm afraid. Buy a car which doesn't spy on me, which can't be unlocked by anybody, [...], a car that can simply, safely and comfortably move me and my family from one point to another. Without updating my social media profile or telling me about those amazing shopping opportunities nearby.
I have absolutely NO sympathy for the car makers.Texas Instruments never slowed it's chip production during the lockdowns and it's probably the only fab sitting pretty today. And its fabs are mostly in the US so it doesn't have to wait 8-10 weeks for its chip to make their way across the Pacific and another week or three to clear ports and customs. It was probably the same bean counters who told their bosses to put all their proprietary, confidential and mission critical data on the web because it's free that decided saving a couple pennies was worth the time and lag to send everything overseas. And anyone with any brains knows that a web is just a bunch of holes held together with spider shit.
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