It may be hard to believe, but the automotive industry has been facing the chip shortage challenge for over two years now. What was thought to be just a temporary hurdle, has now become an ongoing struggle for the entire sector. But why hasn’t the industry been able to put these issues in the past? And is there a way to crank up the manufacturing speed of semiconductor chips?
In just 1960, pretty much the only electronics in cars was the radio. Fast forward 60 plus years, and according to different sources, modern cars can use up to 3,000 semiconductor chips.
This means the production of a single vehicle will inevitably take a lot longer than it used to. This shift has happened due to many factors from amping up the performance to meeting consumer demands, but all in all the need for all the chips have been caused by shifting the focus from hardware to software in today’s vehicles.
The main challenge with automotive chips is that they need to be far more reliable and durable to extreme conditions than average consumer chips. From extreme temperature changes to enduring constant shocks and vibrations, it takes a lot more time and effort to produce automotive semiconductor chips than the ones in our smart phones for example.
The good news is that manufacturers are finding new ways to speed up the production again and hopefully the days of chip shortage will soon be a thing of the past for the automotive industry.
Source: forbes.com
