>If you're willing to pay 10x 2019 prices you can probably get whatever chips you need. Many companies are deciding that's not worthwhile.

The problem as I understand it is a company like TSMC sells capacity for the some time period - like a year. The automakers thought people wouldn't buy cars, so they relinquished their slots. Turns out car demand exploded, so they went back to TSMC and said "hey we need those slots" and TSMC said "sorry your slot already got sold to nvidia".

Chrsyler could offer to pay TSMC 10x more, but that that ultimately wouldn't do much, the slot is gone and they would have to buy the capacity from nvidia. nvidia is in no position to sell because they are also facing extreme demand. How would it look to nvidia if, while gamers across the world can't get their hands on 3080s, they sold their fab capacity to Chrysler for $$$$?.

So money isn't solely the issue here.

Chip shortages are at a point in the US were government contractors who already have right by law to jump ahead of anyone else in line when ordering and can probably pay whatever price they want are still being told that new shipments won't come for 16 months.

There just are not enough of them being made.

Yeah, but -- though I haven't run the numbers -- it seems like Jaguar would be better off taking smaller profits while overbidding for the chips rather than just go idle and make something. Even selling at a loss may be preferable to the huge damage to brand from such a discontinuity. (Remember how hard the major internet sites work to avoid downtime.)

Capacity is sold out for several months. Next free slots are in several months. Even 1000x price may not get chips manufacturers need.

It's not correct to think that increased prices solves shortages. I work in automotive chip industry. We have many cases where no amount of money could fix the shortage within the next 9 months. Only choices for carmaker is to produce fewer cars or produce the car without the chip that is short (which is not always possible).

There are contracts that might prevent that from happening, just like lead times don't disappear, even if you outbid everyone else (if it was a bidding issue).

Throwing money at a problem to try and solve it can be impossible in various ways.

It's not just the normal customers, though. A predicted shortage caused a run on chips by people looking for a profit. I've been working on a PCB design for months in which I specifically picked a chip to design around that was newish, in current production, and plentiful at all the major suppliers. I got my first test run done, made a few changes, ordered a second run, which I intended to populate myself, and there were exactly 4 chips left at a single major supplier. Yet, Octopart suddenly lists dozens of new suppliers I've never heard of.

We are having a similar problem, and certain chips simply aren't available at any price.

Car companies are literally paying 6x to 8x 2019 prices right now and still can't get stock.