General Motors Co (GM) President Mark Reuss said on Thursday that the company will co-develop semiconductors with several producers to make chips that can handle more electronic features in its vehicles, a revamp of strategy that comes as a shortage of chips disrupts the global auto industry.
GM currently uses a wide assortment of semiconductors in its cars. It now plans to reduce the types of chips it uses to just three families of semiconductors over the next several years. That would reduce the variety of chips GM orders by 95 percent, making it easier for producers to fulfill the company’s needs and boosting margins, Reuss said at the Barclays Auto Conference.
Reuss said that GM needs to cut down on semiconductor complexity because the rapid increase in high-tech functions in its new models, along with the company’s rapid push toward electric vehicles, means the automaker needs a greater amount of chips.
“We see the semiconductor requirements more than doubling over the next several years as the vehicles we produce become more of a technology platform,” Reuss said.
GM will be working to develop the chips with Qualcomm Inc, STMicroelectronics NV, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), Renesas Electronics Corp, ON Semiconductor Corp, NXP Semiconductors NV and Infineon Technologies AG, Reuss said.
The Detroit automaker last month reported its third-quarter sales fell 33 percent and profits were almost half what they were a year ago because of lost production due to a lack of chips. GM CEO Mary Barra said last month that she expects the semiconductor shortage to last into the second half of next year.
Separately, Ford Motor Co, responding to a global semiconductor shortage that has crimped profits and production, plans to explore buying chips directly from GlobalFoundries Inc.
The automaker said on Thursday that it is forming a “strategic collaboration” with GlobalFoundries, which went public in a US$2.6 billion listing last month and recently moved its headquarters from California to Malta, New York, where it is expanding a foundry to add capacity.
“If everything progresses as we hope, Ford and GlobalFoundries will team up to grow the supply for Ford’s current vehicle lineup, and also do R&D work together,” said Chuck Gray, vice president of embedded software and controls for the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker. “It’s an important step in our plans to vertically integrate key technologies.”
The chip shortage has dented profits at automakers including Ford, and cost the global auto industry US$210 billion in lost production, according to the consulting firm Alix Partners. The crisis has also forced auto executives to rethink their supply-chain strategies and consider in-house chip design as computing and software become central to modern vehicles.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last