alt Hacker NewsThat depends on your definition of "competitive", doesn't it?
Being 3x as expensive as China but 0.1x as expensive as current small-scale EU manufacturing can be extremely competitive. Plenty of people looking for <1000 unit runs would be willing to pay extra for a "made in EU" label.
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lefra • yesterday at 10:14 AM
For that, there's a company named eurocircuits. Slightly more expensive than JLCPCB, but not 30x.
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Joel_Mckay • yesterday at 9:03 AM
If the only service a CM brings to the table is cost reduction, than its a doomed business model.
Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win.
Have a great day =3
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COVID and the supply chain crisis made apparent just how over-reliant we are on Shenzhen and Taiwan for the most basic components. There are several hundred ICs on dozens of circuitboards in every car now that are dumber, slower, and less efficient than a 1990s calculator, that we have lost the ability to produce domestically. These are now bottlenecks to manufacturing in any disruption to world trade.
It doesn't need to be cutting edge, if you have a few board assembly shops and some fabs pumping out small chips in 20-30 year old process nodes it helps the resilience of the economy and geopolitical situation a great deal.