I was reading an interview with the head of stellantis. They were asking about the impact to production with all the chip issues. They said something to the effect of “we’re going to build the higher profit vehicles first”. So…guessing after tradesman the limited megacab is the next highest profit?
So are we assuming "higher profit vehicles" is a maxed out limited, or a base tradesman. From my take they make more selling two trucks with semiconductors to spare than one over the top limited(given current climate). They appear to be trimming the fat already with packages going from 1, 2 to B, C. I think they are still trying to hold firm to limited models specifically because the culture of people buying them wont if they don't get the features that have been around for the past ten years for a 90k vehicle.
I realize that you could have more than one module could have multiple chips in a module but the vast majority of what is it a vehicle is dumb meaning there is no real computing going on just sending voltage here or there or giving a ground connection. Short of what is on the bus network it’s a voltage or resistance reading that is monitored by one of the smart modules like a pcm or tcm. Call me ignorant but a microchip is the cpu. the rest is just a circuit board to carry the voltage or supply grounds and create resistance to achieve a voltage. Don’t really see why you would have as many as some of these claims. Ev having substantially more I understand. I’d like to know why there would be more than one microchip short of what’s needed in the few modules that hold a small memory and actually do any computing. If you can explain im more than happy to hear the explanation.
We can call them modules, chips, little black boxes, whatever we are all referencing semiconductors. Few are consumer brand specific. They are represented as a cpu, but are still small building blocks for a larger unit. They range as you are describing from a 12 function device on that mirror board to a still small(relatively) multi core on your cell phone. The
market shifted with everyone buying computers and not vehicles. I have read where some of the big three are trying to move away from some figment of JUST IN TIME by ordering more chips then they need(think toilet paper). The issue is you cant quantify a module as just having one chip. That board with the small components is the cheap way to construct a custom mirror quickly, and for less cost. You could buy a single chip to do all that computing, and simplify the layout at a much higher cost and waste of function. Newer vehicles utilize a differing style of communication topology, where the smaller sub components do reach back to a more logical unit. This is vastly different than a car from the 90's. Mercedes have fiber optic cables running all through the cab. The big issue was JUST IN TIME manufacturing got caught with its pants down and the market wont wait for you to figure your crap out. Everyone still buying got orders in. Chips are part of everything now. Even a phone charge cable has a small processor in the cable end. Manufacturing isn't really ready yet for the electric car. They need so much of the raw materials currently available. Just guessing here, you could probably make an order of ten regular gas vehicles compared to one electric car. These materials are much more finite than any Fossil fuel. No one seems to want to address that issue...