Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022
One important part of the chip shortage is the massive amount of price gouging going on.<p>Every IC is being bought up by new 3rd party distributors to scalp to desperate electronics manufacturers.<p>Take a look at this chip we are just now crossing as an example, click on &#x27;Non-authorized stocking distributors&#x27;:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;octopart.com&#x2F;tps2052bdgnr-texas+instruments-699312?r=sp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;octopart.com&#x2F;tps2052bdgnr-texas+instruments-699312?r...</a><p>Win Source has a bunch, but you will pay 6x the cost. We have been quoted even 100x the list price for some ICs on our boards.<p>Luckily as a small company we are nimble and can mostly cross to similar components, and have been for months now, but a whole board assembly run can be stopped with a single component being impossible to find out of hundreds on the BOM.<p>Having scalpers in the mix raising the price for all components worries me that the chip shortage might not end for many years, as they can self-fund by raising their prices to stock up on new supply. Not to mention the higher number of random failures as counterfeits easily find their way into the supply chain without &#x27;authorized&#x27; distributors.