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Semiconductor Shortage Squeezes New Car Inventories

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FisherWilcoxTaggart Survivor

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Survivor needs his new "odd-year" pickup truck, and the one I want is harder to find than a coherent Willie Taggart game plan. I even flirted with the idea of looking at a brand other than Ford, but their inventories are thin too. Plants have slowed production or been shuttered altogether. The auto industry is losing billions. The total global impact of this COVID-19 thing is absolutely staggering.
 
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Our lot looks like a state office building at 5:05 PM. Trucks are especially in short supply. (Ram trucks I'm at work now and if we had our usual inventory we could have sold 25 new vehicles already today instead of 15 out the door, plus some pre-owned.
Taiwan makes about 75% of the chips used in new vehicles. Huge shortage because of COVID shutdowns and the most severe drought in 50 years in Taiwan - the manufacture of chips takes an enormous amount of water.
Ford is furloughing three plants, and GM is soon to follow.

Need to bring chip production back to the US.
 
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goldmom said:
Our lot looks like a state office building at 5:05 PM. Trucks are especially in short supply. (Ram trucks I'm at work now and if we had our usual inventory we could have sold 25 new vehicles already today instead of 15 out the door, plus some pre-owned.
Taiwan makes about 75% of the chips used in new vehicles. Huge shortage because of COVID shutdowns and the most severe drought in 50 years in Taiwan - the manufacture of chips takes an enormous amount of water.
Ford is furloughing three plants, and GM is soon to follow.

Need to bring chip production back to the US.
Click to expand...
The demand on "chips" exploded as more and more people worked remotely in 2020 and needed them for phones, personal computers, games, etc. And, of course, production of chips slowed as workers were kept away from the plants, etc. Big mess.
 
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FisherWilcoxTaggart Survivor said:
Survivor needs his new "odd-year" pickup truck, and the one I want is harder to find than a coherent Willie Taggart game plan. I even flirted with the idea of looking at a brand other than Ford, but their inventories are thin too. Plants have slowed production or been shuttered altogether. The auto industry is losing billions. The total global impact of this COVID-19 thing is absolutely staggering.
Click to expand...
Have you been to the Car Guru site? I did a 50 mile search here in South Florida for new Ford F-150s and I got eight pages of data returned. I‘ve had a bit of success on this site in the past....
 
FSUDoles said:
Have you been to the Car Guru site? I did a 50 mile search here in South Florida for new Ford F-150s and I got eight pages of data returned. I‘ve had a bit of success on this site in the past....
Click to expand...
Well, yeah...our pre-owned lot has several F-150's 😂😂😂😂
 
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In 2000 less than 20% of new vehicles were chip dependent. Today's new cars are 40%. The February deep Freeze in TX also created a shortage of chemicals that are fossil fuel based and needed to make the plastics used in cars.
Earliest recovery to pre-pandemic levels won't be until this fall.
Be prepared to walk into a showroom and order your car. This happened thirty and forty years ago but is generally rare these days unless you're buying an exotic Italian car and dropping $300K.
 
This is fascinating news to know. Ever thought of working with Consumer Reports?
You would be a natural fit; as an editor or a very talented free lance writer. :)
 
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