Why can't they keep things going temporarily by spinning up those n-th tier fab wannabes? (your words lol)
In my estimation, there are few trustworthy foundries that can facilitate the kind of scale that an automaker would need. If you're in a hotly competitive industry, you're not likely to contact some random fab freelancer to do a few runs of some chip you need, even if you have the design and everything ready to go. They're unlikely to do it at the quantity you need, on the timeline you need, to the degree of quality that you need, and with the secrecy that you need.
I mean, if you're Denso or Bosch, shouldn't you be able to make your own chips? Auto parts have a long life cycle, so you can amortize the cost of the machinery over many years.
Years long lead times. Every 200mm fab around is booked for at least 1y+ despite biggest increases in capacity in decades.
A labs scale manufacturing can be setup within months, but it takes 3-4 years to setup AMHS fit fabs on a commercially profitable scale invariably of the technology level involved.
> Years long lead times. Every 200mm fab around is booked for at least 1y+ despite biggest increases in capacity in decades.
This is precisely my point. There is a need for more capacity.
I know this is a typo, but that would explain the dimensional trend in smartphones...
Still, I'm not going to get the image of a city-sized IC out of my head.
http://audilab.bmed.mcgill.ca/~funnell/InforMed/Bacon/HW/pri...
https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/vw-may-seek-damages-b...
It takes time to tape out over to another node, and by then they expect to not have the supply issue anymore with their regular suppliers.
You can, but you would be few years late to the party. There are already dozens of n-th tier fab wannabes riding the trend.
Really ancient fab tools are flying off the shelf like hot cookies. People even scoop eighties era equipment off Ebay, and such.