Rivian welcomes some early preorder holders at the plant in Normal, IL

[cc84]

.......buy the cheapest thing that meets a minimum spec......

Good points Greg and I agree. I do understand human nature and you're correct that price is most often king, depending on one's financial status. I also understand that many people vote "for their wallets" when something is promised to them, regardless of how it affects others. IMO, most times you get what you pay for. Not always, but a pretty good bet you will. Still, price is usually king.

If anything is done to reduce the auto industries dependency on foreign manufacturing, I guess it depends on how badly the microchip shortage affected the US Auto industry and whether they can come up with a solution. If they're not working on a solution now, it can/will happen again.

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[AdamsFan1983]

I know zero about microchips, or what is necessary to start production. If it takes years, perhaps Americans need to get started building the necessary infrastructure now, or be at the mercy of other countries.....when you place all your dependency on others, there's a good chance, at some point, you'll be disappointed.
?



Yes it is and I hope it does too.

Chip manufacturing used to be much less concentrated but tsmc has been taking the industry over…. I can’t remember the exact numbers but in the 90s there’s were several dozen companies of note in that industry and now there are basically a couple, and tsmc controls like 70% of the entire industry.

It’s an enormously capital intensive process that nobody wants to invest in because the innovation rate is so fast that it’s damned near impossible to recover your investment.

 

[crashmtb]

No glove box. They really liked the infotainment center, and they alone drove the R1T's. Spoke with my friend yesterday for about 45 minutes and all I can say is - we're going to be super happy with the finished project and the ride and drive events!!

underseat storage ought to fill in just fine for a glovebox.

You should probably go to the rivian factory to check on the, uh, product integrity of the Yakima tents ?

 

[GaryL]

No glove box. They really liked the infotainment center, and they alone drove the R1T's. Spoke with my friend yesterday for about 45 minutes and all I can say is - we're going to be super happy with the finished project and the ride and drive events!!

I’m curious if your friend had to sign a NDA?

 

[MIG]

I know zero about microchips, or what is necessary to start production. If it takes years, perhaps Americans need to get started building the necessary infrastructure now, or be at the mercy of other countries.....when you place all your dependency on others, there's a good chance, at some point, you'll be disappointed.
?



Yes it is and I hope it does too.

Intel and TSMC just announced big increases in US manufacturing capacity. The infrastructure bill proposal had semiconductor manufacture in it. Will see if the current version keeps it in.

 

[hrp783]

Yay! Hopefully we see more roaming around Texas

 

[jimcgov3]

I’m curious if your friend had to sign a NDA?

Yes. They did.

 

[jjwolf120]

Yes. They did.

We know it was really you Jim.

 

[skyote]

We know it was really you Jim.

He wishes! Shoot, I'm sure all of us do!

 

[Trekkie]

Chip manufacturing used to be much less concentrated but tsmc has been taking the industry over…. I can’t remember the exact numbers but in the 90s there’s were several dozen companies of note in that industry and now there are basically a couple, and tsmc controls like 70% of the entire industry.

It’s an enormously capital intensive process that nobody wants to invest in because the innovation rate is so fast that it’s damned near impossible to recover your investment.

I used to be in this business, left it in 2015 when my employer got gobbled up.

Basically you have a few left. TSMC, Broadcom, and Qualcom are the 'big guys' there's plenty others Intel, etc. Intel is larger than the first three but the CPU business skews the numbers. Intel's probably a slow motion decline right now, the advent of ARM and Phones really has hurt them.

The first three I've listed have gone on buying sprees over the 2000s. Broadcom is the name, but it started out as HP's chip manufacturing business, and they started buying up companies through the 2000s and renamed to Avago, they picked up LSI Logic, Emulex, Brocade, and Broadcom in the 2010s.

You're right in that it'd take at least 18-24 months to spin up a chip manufacturing facility. Probably longer, because they are dirty as heck and put out a lot of heavy metal waste, search for IBM and Burlington to see the history left behind there. Building a plant that doesn't pollute is harder.

If you are a dystopian future fiction type the US downfall will be that they tossed all the manufacturing out and became a consumer from other countries, if those countries decide to stop selling the current shortfall will look like a cakewalk.

China holds the manufacturing expertise cards right now and the constant blaming of them for things isn't going to work forever. It's a crazy 'what if' scenario generator. But if you pay any attention to US manufacturing it's not a matter of 'cheap labor' it's a matter of expertise right now. I can't remember the interview, think it was with Tim Cook of Apple about moving laptop manufacturing back to the US. He said that the type of folks you need to build a plant, create the tooling, all that stuff, in China could you fill a city of 80,000 with the people who know how to do it. The US can barely fill a meeting room.

Things as simple as super precise screws are hard to get made, let alone a bunch of other things to make the rest of the things the screws go in. It's kinda nuts how bad it got. Fixing it is a multi-year endeavor.

I'm not getting all tinfoil hat just yet, but our JIT manufacturing got whacked by COVID, and if this delta thing does another whack, it's going to be a long few years of weird shortages.

 

[jimcgov3]

We know it was really you Jim.

Ha. I wish...I would have been in every photo Rivian posted w/ a stupid ear-to-ear grin that I wouldn't have been able to wipe off...

 

[GaryL]

Yes. They did.

II’ll just say I’m truly happy for those that attended and leave it at that.

 

[ActionDH]

We’re they privy to actually seeing Launch Green? ?

 

[SeaGeo]

We’re they privy to actually seeing Launch Green? ?

We weren't, but they may have been. ?

 

[LaunchGreen]

Chip manufacturing used to be much less concentrated but tsmc has been taking the industry over…. I can’t remember the exact numbers but in the 90s there’s were several dozen companies of note in that industry and now there are basically a couple, and tsmc controls like 70% of the entire industry.

It’s an enormously capital intensive process that nobody wants to invest in because the innovation rate is so fast that it’s damned near impossible to recover your investment.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/23/int...-to-build-two-new-chip-plants-in-arizona.html

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