Benoit

Yes, I'm monitoring the tire shortage scenario for my business too. It was already looming in the shadow, well before 2021.
We are eating up tons of tire rubbers a year, more than 40 cars, on the road 24/7, in all conditions, and we have already started to make strategic reserves. Basically ordering the tires for next year spring and fall, yet.
This will allow us to have two seasons where we could jump a buy, or reduce the amount of new tires aquired, and still insure operation of our fleet.
I also ordered a strategic car change. Progressively departing from our big and heavy Mitsubishi Outlander, to a much more compact Toyota Yaris Cross hybrid. This will reduce tirewear even more, due to less centrifugal masses in the highly curvy roads around us, but also, will reduce fuel consumption sigificantly.

TangoRed

Mercedes let it be known they, and many other automakers, are finally preparing to migrate to the modern chips instead of the type they need right now. Doesn't help the immediate need but interesting they finally saw the writing on the wall.

EZZ

Thats probably because their newer EVs need more modern chips to run...economies of scale driving the need rather than them seeing the light

JeffKeryk

Good point. The legacy car companies have been lax in moving to new architectures. Cars do not really need the fast, high density chips. But those older chips are harder to procure; SEMI companies do not wanna make 'em because they are less profitable. Why should they make 286/386 processors? Tesla was able to repurpose and reuse chips by rewriting the firmware; they are unique in this regard. A huge advantage...

Legacy car companies are years behind. And they know it.