General Motors Invents New Chip Design To Address Global Chip Scarcity

Global chip shortages have become a major issue for automakers. (photo; pixabay)

JAKARTA – General Motors wants to address the global semiconductor shortage by creating a new design built in North America. This statement came from GM President, Mark Reuss, on Thursday, October 18.

Reuss told an investor conference GM is working with seven chip suppliers on three new families of microcontrollers that will reduce the number of unique chips by 95% in future vehicles. These supply partners include Qualcomm, STM, TSMC, Renesas, NXP, Infineon, and ON Semi.

"Most of GM's future investment in the new microcontroller family "will flow" to the US and Canada", Reuss said as quoted by Reuters.

Vehicle manufacturers around the world have also faced shortages of semiconductor chips for most of the year, causing everything from heated seats to infotainment systems to suffer production difficulties.

The shortfall has in some cases led GM and other automakers to build, then park unfinished vehicles until the missing chips finally arrive and can be installed. In other cases, the vehicle is delivered to the customer without some of the features it should have.

"We see our semiconductor requirements more than doubling over the next few years, with the advent of new electric vehicles and complex driver assistance systems such as UltraCruise", said Reuss.

According to Reuss, the new microcontrollers will consolidate many of the functions now handled by individual chips, which will not only reduce cost and complexity but "will drive quality and predictability".

“New microcontrollers will be built in high volumes – as many as 10 million units per year,” said Reuss.

A GM spokeswoman told Reuters the company was "working to develop a much more resilient, more scalable and ever-present ecosystem to meet our needs".

Earlier Thursday, Ford Motor Co and chipmaker GlobalFoundries Inc said they plan to work together to increase supply for the automaker's vehicles and the broader US auto industry.