Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1345210
70 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2021 tric cars in the market: Ford with the passion- ate Mustang Mach-E, GM with the 1,000hp insane HUMMER EV (yes, all caps), and Volks- wagen with the sensible ID.4 (Figure 1). All that excitement has been partially halted because a few ($60 billion worth of them) semiconduc- tors are missing from the supply chain. For sure nothing else can go wrong, right? You should know by now, based on last year, that you should not ask this question. Of course, there's plenty else already going wrong. What most people don't realize is that right behind the chip shortage shockwave is another shock- wave that is as damaging and as dangerous: the counterfeit components shockwave. e following (non) scientific graphic dis- plays how supply chain disruptions create the counterfeit shockwave (Figure 2). Let's start prior to the disruption. e world is trotting along, no major disruptions, and in this case supply and demand are well matched. In this case, there's not much for counterfeiters to do other than explore smaller pockets of disrup- It's February 2021, and as the world slowly recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, another problem plagues the global economy: the electronic component shortage. What some economists have deemed to be a decade of immense prosperity and growth, the "Roar- ing Twenties" started with a hiccup. From cars to videogames, the lack of electronic compo- nents in the market has created a shockwave that is causing delivery delays and billions in losses to companies worldwide. U.S. car giant General Motors, for example, announced that it is shutting three plants and slowing pro- duction at a fourth due to the semiconductor shortage. e Detroit car manufacturer said this shortfall will cause a $2 billion reduction in its 2021 profits. GM is not alone. Ford said in January that it was shuttering a factory in Ger- many for a month, while Volkswagen said in December it will make 100,000 fewer cars this quarter as a result of the shortage. All that in a year filled with excitement around the long-waited introduction of elec- The Dark Side of the Chip Shortage—Counterfeits X-Rayted Files by Bill Cardoso, CREATIVE ELECTRON Figure 1: The all-electric 2022 HUMMER, 2021 Mustang Mach-E, and 2021 VW ID.4.