the has been a change, I am hopefull the next quater will prove better, you see what messed a lot of shortages up is the the just in time manufacturing proccess adopted by everyone from cars to other items. its saves the millions a year in storage costs as stuff litrally for a production run starts turning up a few days before.
covid hit, people were stuck at home and noone was buying new cars, manufactures canceled their chip orders, which meant the chip manufactures canceled there semiconductor orders (these orders are allocated by the worlds wafer manufactures which there are only 3 of) so these factories suddenly had un ollocated build and manufacturing time for wafer.
these companies then decided they will get their upgrades done over the next few years and allocated the free time to their own upgrades so they could ramp up production (and new facilities too) then when covid did not go away suddenly no one wanted to use public transport and wanted cars.
car brands wanted more chips, chip manfucatures went to semiconductors (wafers are needed in all chips) and low and behold they get told well know you cut your orders down and we have re allocated the time to our own upgrades.
these plant upgrades as well as facilities are nearing completion and some brands have actually signed long term permanent deals so they are never left in this situation again, from april to june the chip shortage for cars, vans etc should start to return normal.
I hope this helps explain what went wrong.