I work in (not automotive) manufacturing. We are backordered over a year on industrial inkjet print heads, and I assure you that none of its on purpose. For us parts/supplier capacity/raw material/labor hiring and customer demand are batshit insane right now. Vendor lead times are at least double their historic norms for us, I often can't even pay to expedite my orders. Hell, we're paying between 2x and 4x hourly rates for OT to get enough build techs in. Our products have ~100 components, I can only imagine how crazy it is for a car mfg with hundreds of vendors and thousands of components. Plus the silicon shortage in Taiwan and other countries where automotive chips are made.
Take off your tinfoil hat. None of this is a conspiracy.