It's all a big coincidence that cars are becoming unaffordable at the exact same time that airline and public transit are forcing draconian restrictions on travelers. You can buy all of the machines to make chips for about $1 million right now. They will be slower and consume more power than something from Intel or TSMC, but they are more than capable of anything a modern car needs to do (fuel injection, ignition control, abs, basic infotainment, etc). Modern cars also use CAN bus effectively enough that these systems can be easily swapped out as stuff is redesigned based on availability. You probably can't run autopilot or super cruise on them. Maybe this is China's way of getting a foothold in the U.S. auto market. If the choice is between a $70k Ford and a $10k chinese POS I think I'd choose the chinese one with less debt.
Honestly screw it. Let's go back to non chip cars. We did it already, and all the chips do is add broken features anyways. You lose a large amount of luxuries, but you have a fully functional car. Who cares if the windows are manual?
I don't think I want to go all the way back to non-chip cars. I don't like adjusting/rebuilding carburetors. Early 90s fuel injected engines were some of the most reliable and lowest maintenance engines around. The transition to DOHC engines was a huge step forward both in power and fuel efficiency and that happened in the late 90s. Past that I'm not really sure any of it was worth it. They require computers, but probably have less sophistication than the average TV remote these days.
Then again gas is probably going to be an issue soon anyway. Maybe we transition back to 80s diesel tech. Those didn't require any electronics and could be converted to run on biodiesel. I wonder if we could turn the corpses of people killed by the vax into biodiesel.
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