The chip shortage is real and it's causing the several North American General Motors plants to shut down, including plants here in Michigan.

When COVID-19 hit General Motors had to temporarily shut down due to keeping their workers safe. GM slowly put safety measures into place in order to bring back its workers and building vehicles.

COVID-19 was and is a huge problem in Southeast Asia where most of the chip manufacturers are located. Just like when during the pandemic started, these Asian factory workers had a huge surge in COVID-19 cases and continues to happen keeping the chips that go into vehicles from being built at a normal rate of speed.

According to CNN, only a small handful of GM's plants will remain operating until the chips become more readily available. For now GM will keep making SUVs, pickup trucks, Corvette and Camaro's but everything else will be shut down. Since GM is short on chips it is prioritizing them for their most popular and profitable vehicles.

Even though the SUVs and pickup trucks will still be produced, they won't be produced in high numbers because of the lack of chips that are currently available.

This situation is not only affecting GM, but Ford, Chrysler and other companies may find themselves shutting down temporarily as we move forward into the fall.

The chip problem is such an issue, its causing problems getting vehicles for 2022 built.

Right now in Michigan, the main plant that face temporary shutdown is Lansing Delta Township Assembly. They will be down starting Monday for two weeks and expect to be back in operation the week of September 20. The Delta plant makes Chevrolet Traverse and the Buick Enclave midsize SUVs.

Any Michigan companies who supply parts for the Delta plant will suffer an affect as well.

I hope GM and the other auto giants start seeing the need to keep Americans working and perhaps open chip making plants here in the states. Farming out key components to other countries make us rely on them when it really should be the other way around.

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To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

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