Author 丨 Peng Suping
Editor 丨 Zhang Ruosi
Figure Source 丨 Figure Worm
The chip shortage situation is still grim, and even Tesla, which has always been called "no shortage of cores", has launched a contingency plan.
Recently, there are media reports that according to an internal document, in order to solve the chip crisis and the set sales target for the fourth quarter of 2021, Tesla has "reduced the allocation" of some Chinese-made models.
Specifically, for some Chinese-made Model 3 and Model Y, Tesla removed an electronic control unit (ECU) from the bogie. Under normal circumstances, the above models will be installed with two related electronic control units in the exclusive price.
It is not known how many vehicles are currently affected. "Tens of thousands of cars shipped to customers in China, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and other parts of Europe" have been affected, and there is no further information on whether Tesla's vehicles sold to the United States or Canada have made similar decisions.
What impact will the installation of one less electronic control unit affect the vehicle? According to the internal staff who provided the document information, the electronic control unit of the steering knuckle is mainly used to convert the rotation of the steering wheel into the turning of the wheel, but the lack of this electronic control unit does not threaten the daily driving safety, because it is itself an electronically redundant design, one of which is a spare.
However, tesla's internal discussion results show that removing a knuckle electronic control unit may affect the realization of L3 level autonomous driving functions, which has been an important selling point for Tesla products for a long time. However, Tesla's full autopilot function has also repeatedly "jumped tickets", which is far from being realized, and for consumers, Tesla's autopilot function still needs to be paid attention to at all times, and cannot be completely handed over to the vehicle.
Because of the chip shortage for a certain degree of "de-allocation", Tesla is not the only one. In October last year, Ideal Auto offered consumers a "reduced" car purchase solution: due to the lack of supply of millimeter-wave radar chips, some models can be delivered in the form of three radars, and consumers will reload them later; since then, another new car-making force, Xiaopeng Motors, has also introduced a similar plan, and consumers can mention models without radars relatively early.
Editor of this issue Wang Tingting Intern Zhan Huinan
