re: Market adjustment for new car sales

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I'm going to go out on a limb here and you can down vote all you want but I smell a concerted ,concocted, lie about a chip shortage. It is just too convenient too believe at this point. Robots make these chips.The robots make these chips faster than you can blink your eyes. They can work 24/7. This is no longer adding up.

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Auto manufacturers predicted Covid would significantly reduce demand and cancelled advance chip orders. Demand actually increased and by the time they realized it, production capacity was taken by others who use similar chips. Auto chips aren't especially difficult to make, there's just no excess build capacity right now.

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However, the vast majority of the chips we use daily are not made in high-end fabs. They’re made using older process nodes in older fabs that have likely been fully or substantially amortized. This is especially true of parts designed for automotive applications. Cars and trucks are filled with microcontrollers that aren’t made with and don’t require EUV or other sorts of advanced lithography.

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However, the dip in new car sales proved short-lived, and suddenly, demand for new cars skyrocketed. When the automakers tried to file new chip orders, they discovered that the fab capacity that had been dedicated to making automotive chips had been reallocated to other customers. Lead times went through the roof and these automakers now find themselves with severe chip shortages. As a result, new cars and trucks are being built, but without the semiconductors needed to finish them. Without the chips, they can’t be shipped.

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How Long Will it Take for the Chip Shortage to Ease?

Link above is from the Electronic Engineering Journal.

Taking a logically cold business view, one could say the auto manufacturers don't know how to run their business. Most of what I've read says this shortage will persist until the end of 2022.