Look at all of you with your cheap gas. I'm at $7 per gallon (taking into account current sterling to USD exchange rates)
We get all of our gas out of California so our prices are always nuts. It never fails to amaze me on my drives back home to Idaho that I can find gas much cheaper in Bum Fuck, Montana then I can get it for here.
I work from home, bike to anything nearby, and still have three quarters of a tank from when I drove to Bakersfield for my vaccine. I say let the prices skyrocket and put a boot in GM and Ford's ass to catch up to Tesla on EVs.
This is not going to help the gas situation back east: All lanes of I-40 bridge in downtown Memphis shut down for emergency maintenance It may be closed for a few days or a few months.
Y'all hear about the chip shortage for new cars? I've heard that there's whole lots of new cars waiting. The used market is stupid. Our SUV, a 2015 which we've put plenty of miles on, is estimated to be worth at or more than we paid several years ago. Anybody know anything about this situation?
It's not so much a shortage as it is they drastically underestimated how much buying people would do and under-ordered complex parts by a lot. Now that they need them, it takes time to spin production back up and produce. Supply everywhere is backed up due to lower thoughput and next to no inventory and people buying. Lumber, bicycles/parts, boats... you name it, odds are it's in short supply.
It’s my understanding that much of it is COVID supply chain related, and the demand of multiple markets for the same product. It’s why unfinished cars are piling up in lots, PlayStations are nearly impossible to get, and some phones are hard to find. Because new car production is backed up (see steel prices, chips) used car prices are going through the roof here in the northeast, if you can find one that hasn’t been in a couple or three accidents. Regarding Far East supply chains, bicycles are like hens teeth here. All of the larger stores simply don’t have them, and bike shops are telling people it’s a six month wait. ATVs, quads etc the same. If you can find them they’re crazy over priced. I’ve got a neighbor who sold a used quad for more than he paid for it 10 years ago. The buyer never even started it up, took one look at it and loaded it into the truck.
New vehicle CPU's (specifically) are a result of not ordering enough, from what I understand. Other things are very much COVID supply chain related. For instance, the #1 delay for new RAM pickups right now are the dually wheels... there just aren't any to be had, so they can't build the trucks. (I call my dealer weekly for an update on my new truck, and while it doesn't have dually wheels, they get an insight to what are causing other delays).
Another thing I've tangentially read about in regards to the chip shortage (but don't take my word for it) is the proliferation of having 'smart' everything these days. All those fancy appliances that can connect to the internet so you can tweet from your Samsung Fridge and the like all also are apparently a bigger factor in the demand than most people realize.
Yeah, I've heard about it, and it made me think: Did y'all ever think that MAYBE THERE ARE TOO GODDAM MANY COMPUTER MODULES IN CARS THESE DAYS?! Jesus H. Christ, there are about thirty different modules in most AMERICAN cars rolling off the lot these days, and the Germans have even more than that. I'm not one of those Luddites who think we should go back to carburetors and points distributors; trust me, I've driven carbureted vehicles for years, and I love having electronic fuel injection that starts up the first time, every time, no matter what the weather is. But do we need a damn computer module FOR EACH DOOR IN A VEHICLE, just to control the windows and door locks? What was so bad about a switch and relay? Do you wonder why the windows and locks in my thirty year old Firebird still work, but I see cars that are still in the warranty period having problems with those very basic systems? Don't even get me started on the CAN BUS communication networks that they use, which links all of them together, resulting in a situation where one bad module can result in a bunch of other, seemingly unrelated modules/ systems to shut down, possibly "bricking" the whole car.
Get the priorities right people. Fuck the car/chip/wood/steel/housing shortage, we can't get Guinness. Seems there is a shortage of widgets as a result of covid.
A crypto cave-in is when the crypto-mine collapses and the crypto-miners are buried in crypto-rubble, killing some immediately and leaving the rest to slowly suffocate.