Driving Me Crazy

Nobody likes not being in control, especially behind the wheel. Is all this technology progress?

- Robin Swithinbank

A CONFESSION: UNTIL recently, whenever talk of semiconductor shortages came up, I was under the impression that most cars made do with just a handful of the things.

I say a handful. One seemed like it would be enough: one car, one engine, one big fat semiconductor. My estimate was a little short. Some cars come loaded with as many as 3,000.

Semiconductors – also known as microchips – are big business, as you probably know. According to an organisation called World Semiconductor Trade Statistics, more than 932 billion of them were made in 2020, a number so vast I don’t even know what to compare it to.

Instead, some math. Of those many billions, half are absorbed by electronics while another 15 percent go into the automotive industry, equating to about 140 billion chips. The world turned out 78 million new cars in 2020, which would give an average of around 1,800 chips per new car. By any measure, that’s a very big handful.

But even at those numbers, there still aren’t enough to go round. Demand for new cars is still higher than the supply of microchips can keep up with, sending delivery times into a spin. In September, a friend of mine took delivery of a car he’d specced in January. By the time it finally arrived, he’d forgotten what colour he’d chosen.

He was lucky. If he had ordered a Land Rover Defender, he might have waited 12 months. For a Porsche Taycan, longer still. If he’d gone for a Tesla Model X Dual Motor, he could have been kept hanging for up to two years.

If that’s dispiriting, the advice on beating the wait is worse. Compromise on trim tends to be the consensus, which is tantamount to saying you should buy something you don’t really like. And that’s no advice at all.