"In response to the chip shortage, Nissan is redesigning its cars to use more versatile, off-the-shelf chips. Companies in other industries are also doing this, which may herald a major change in Japanese manufacturing.

According to Nikkei News, so far, automobile and home appliance manufacturers have been increasing inventories to cope with the chronic shortage of global semiconductors, but in the long run, reducing reliance on customized chips will become a solution for companies represented by Nissan to solve the shortage of chips. The new direction of the problem.

It is understood that Nissan uses a specially designed chip to adjust the brakes and speedometer of its cars. The company believes that by changing the design of the circuit board, when the supply of this special chip is insufficient, it can be replaced with several off-the-shelf general-purpose chips to avoid affecting the entire production system. General-purpose chips are also cheaper.

At present, a car generally uses 400-500 chips, and Nissan will replace 10% of them with general-purpose chips first.

Driven by the shortage of chips, other Japanese automakers, including Suzuki and Subaru, have undergone similar changes. The shortage of chips has been the main production bottleneck since the beginning of this year. Toyota Motor cut 15% of its auto production on the basis of the November plan.

Until recently, automakers have relied on short-term fixes, such as removing functions that require special chips. General Motors of the United States has introduced trucks without a fuel management module. Some companies, such as Toyota, require their business partners to increase semiconductor inventories.

The automotive industry is currently returning to normal, but many industry insiders believe that chip supply will remain tight in 2022 and 2023. The increase in demand for electric vehicles may exacerbate this problem, because electric vehicles require more than twice the number of semiconductors than traditional vehicles. This will force automakers to find more fundamental solutions.

The automotive industry is not the only industry that is struggling to solve the problem of semiconductor shortages. Air conditioner manufacturer Fujitsu is redesigning the circuit of its air conditioner to enable it to use more versatile chips. The company also plans to reduce the number of chip types by standardizing component designs of multiple models.

In addition, Japanese chip manufacturing equipment supplier Disco previously used 50 different types of chips to control its own equipment. Efforts are currently being made to reduce the required chip types to four."