"So automakers would rather shutter factories than offer chip makers more profit?"

What automakers are driven to do is keep their costs as low as possible. They have shown over the decades that they'll happily forgo strategic advantage for a few cents of cost.

An anecdote I read in HBR many years ago: A US tech company went to Japanese automakers and asked what they could do to get more business from them. "Make you computers faster and more capable so we can design and introduce new products more quickly."

When they approached US car makers, the response was: "Lower the price of your product."

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