The bigger the BOM, the higher the probability something is not available, blocking the product from being fully manufactured.
Cars have bigger BOMs than IoT devices.
Given the long lead times, tech companies are scrambling to use alternative chips: first finding something functionally equivalent and pin compatible; that failing, qualifying something close enough and redesigning PCBs with an updated component footprint; last case scenario, porting FW to a different chip and redesigning circuits to accommodate.
Traditional car companies largely rely on suppliers to redesign electronics (at even greater cost and lead time). There's also more liability with cars so last minute redesigns have to be taken very seriously.
> Traditional car companies largely rely on suppliers to redesign electronics (at even greater cost and lead time).
Just to put this in perspective for some readers, I used to work at one of the largest automakers and suppliers would bend over backwards for us. They would shut down the line and retool for us when we needed something quickly. But even when things were running smoothly, some parts had a 12 month lead time and there was nothing that could be done to expedite that.
I remember one part that we shared with many other automakers had a recall. It took the industry over 3 years to supply all of those parts to consumers. Not airbags, this was almost 20 years ago.
All of that is without a design change. Now add a design change on top and it can easily move a 3 month lead time to 12 months or more.
I do consulting for another automaker now and one of our chips has become unavailable. Actually, at the beginning of the pandemic the price jumped almost 10,000%. We had no choice to pay it, but that also killed all of the margin on that particular part so we immediately started redesigning the PCB for a new chip. The software had to be rewritten for the new chip; several case components had to be redesigned to accommodate the new PCB, testing, mass production, etc. That was over a year ago and the part is just starting to roll out now.
So, I think PlayDate's messaging is completely reasonable.
Anecdotally I think this is right on the money. I've been buying lots of LoRA hardware over the course of the year and I think I'm up to 9 different permutations of the "same" board via swaps of the LoRA SXnnnn/ESPnnnn/GPS Mn units for whatever is currently available. Turns out to be a good way of discovering firmware bugs.
Cars have bigger BOMs than IoT devices.
Given the long lead times, tech companies are scrambling to use alternative chips: first finding something functionally equivalent and pin compatible; that failing, qualifying something close enough and redesigning PCBs with an updated component footprint; last case scenario, porting FW to a different chip and redesigning circuits to accommodate.
Traditional car companies largely rely on suppliers to redesign electronics (at even greater cost and lead time). There's also more liability with cars so last minute redesigns have to be taken very seriously.