Illustration: Jason Torchinsky I’m guessing by now you’ve heard that carmakers have had to slow down or in some cases even stop production because there’s a global shortage of microchips of all kinds. Modern cars are crammed full of these silicon thinking-flakes, so if there aren’t any around, cars won’t get built. This is a strange situation, to be sure, and it’s worth digging into why it’s happening. So let’s do that. Advertisement There’s been a number of explainers out there, and they all generally arrive at the same conclusions, because, well, everyone can pretty clearly see what went wrong. And unsurprisingly, a lot of the blame can be placed squarely on the thing that we can blame for so much of life’s current shittiness: COVID-19.