The global shortage of chips will cost carmakers up to $ 110 billion (2.3 trillion crowns) this year and negatively affect the production of up to 3.9 million cars. This follows from the latest estimate of the consulting company AlixPartners. Contrary to the estimates from the beginning of the year, the damage will be almost double.
And the crisis does not seem to end there. “It’s going to be longer and harder than most people think,” Philadelphia car dealer David Kelleher told the Wall Street Journal. His case illustrates the current situation well – the company tends to stock 700 new cars before the normal summer sales season. He has 98 everywhere this year. “We’re in hell by mid-June,” says Claude Burns, an American Ford dealer, who also has less than a third of the usual stock.
Today, chips are an integral part of modern cars. Up to 1,400 of them can be installed in one car, from safety systems to engines. Without them, many manufacturers are not able to complete the car at all. For example, Ford said it has more than 20,000 unfinished vehicles parked around factories waiting to be shipped with chips.
Other car manufacturers are in a similar situation. Domestic Škoda Auto has leased parking spaces at the airport in Hradec Králové, where in recent days trucks have transported hundreds of unfinished cars, and the airport is said to hold 1,800 of them.
Production has already been reduced by General Motors, Stellantis and Volkswagen. And in the second quarter, it is said that their problems will definitely not be solved, on the contrary, they will worsen. I think the situation will be tense for some time to come. We will feel the consequences for a few more months, “said Volkswagen head boss Ralf Brandstätter for DPA. Seat boss Wayne Griffiths also thinks that the problems will intensify.
In his own way, the French Peugeot is struggling with a lack of chips – for the 308 model, it temporarily returned to analog instrument panels, because versions with a display need a chip. Ford also put less demanding components back into play.
Ford and GM have already reduced their expected earnings this year by billions of dollars, and the Japanese Nissan announced the largest loss in the last 12 years, which is climbing to 30 billion crowns and is almost four times higher than last year.
“The crisis caused by the pandemic has been exacerbated by events that are usually just a” road bump “for the automotive industry,” said Mark Wakefield of AlixPartners. He pointed to the February snowstorms and power outages in Texas, where several chip factories are located, the March fire at the plant of one of the world’s largest chip manufacturers in Japan, and the drought in Taiwan, which is the largest chip producer ever.
The lack of semiconductor chips shakes the entire global market, affects the production of computers, telephones and information technology, as well as conventional electronics. According to analysts polled by CNBC, it could last until 2023. The automotive industry is likely to be hit hardest. According to AlixPartners, one of the reasons is that automakers generally use chips with a lower technological level, which do not bring such profits to chip manufacturers and the resumption of their production does not have such a priority. The carmakers are thus vehemently trying to establish direct cooperation with chip manufacturers in order to avoid supply chain disruptions and dependence on global markets in the future. Last year, they canceled a large part of their chip orders because they feared a drop in sales of new cars during the pandemic.
People are starting to buy cars again, and although the situation is far from the same as before the pandemic, dealers hope that the current boom will compensate them for losses. Watch the report:
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