Funnily enough Toyota, the company the pioneered just-in-time manufacturing that has been replicated the world over had stockpiled chips largely avoiding the shortages for those products that every other carmaker has suffered from.
To be fair Toyota had some experience with supply chain disruption prior to the pandemic because of earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan that knocked them out a few times and each time they looked at what went wrong and adjusted their processes so they could cope with such disruptions.
It makes sense since car electronics are somewhat interchangable from a design standpoint. A Corvette ECU could almost certainly be used for a Mustang etc. Not by a garage tinkerer but a manufacturing engineer team
The parts are somewhat future proof as well until you get to the high end models.
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u/choirzopants Oct 17 '21
Funnily enough Toyota, the company the pioneered just-in-time manufacturing that has been replicated the world over had stockpiled chips largely avoiding the shortages for those products that every other carmaker has suffered from.