Thread: So you want to build a Land Rover....

Land Rover Series III 1-24 pictures by augusto

The reason for the chip shortage is simply that a little over a year ago, faced with plunging sales figures, most car manufacturers worldwide cancelled their orders for specialised computer chips necessary for virtually all current vehicles.

The chip manufacturers happily moved their production line capacity into making chips needed for the vast increase in "work from home". And are quite happily continuing to produce these as demand soared and continues strong.

It does not help that some chips used in cars need "state of the art" facilities that operate in the extreme UV. There are only three of these facilities, one in S. Korea, one in Taiwan, and one USA. According to one report I have read, building another one is going to take tens of billions of dollars, and take several years - provided you can get an export permit for the machinery (USA and Canada only) and can persuade the necessary skilled staff to work for you.

The problem is not just the actual making of the chips, but the fact that everything has to be clean beyond belief, and the fact that you need to use a number of chemicals that are very difficult find a supply, to handle safely, and to clean up after. Waste handling is a major problem.

Or you can redesign your systems to use less advanced chips - probably even more expensive; there was a reason the advanced chips were used!