Written by | Liu Yiwei
Editor| Yu Jie
Produced | Automotive Sankei
According to Reuters reported on February 4, a Ford spokesman revealed that Due to tight chip supply, Ford plans to suspend or cut production at its eight plants in the United States, Mexico and Canada next week.
Plants in Michigan and Kuotitlan, Mexico, will suspend production;
The Kansas City plant in the United States will suspend the production of pickup trucks F-105 and shift one of its production lines to the production of the Transit series;
Plants in Dilborn, Kentucky and Louisville in the United States will operate single shifts or reduce working hours;
In addition, the plant in Oakville, Canada, will cancel overtime work.
It is reported that all changes will be implemented within a week starting on February 7.
Just a day before the production plan adjustment, Ford motor publicly said that due to the shortage of chips will lead to the company's car production decline this quarter, it is expected to significantly increase automobile production in the second half of this year.
In addition to Ford, Toyota is also affected by chip shortages.
On January 18, Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan announced that it will suspend the production of 11 production lines at eight plants in Japan, including the Motomachi Plant in Aichi Prefecture, in February this year.
Affected by the lack of global semiconductor supply, Toyota said that it expects domestic and foreign new vehicle production to be about 150,000 units lower than the production plan in February, and global production will be about 700,000 units, which will be lower than the original forecast of about 9 million units.
Also plagued by the "lack of core" is Volkswagen.
Recently, Volkswagen Group Chief Financial Officer Arnold Antlitlitz said that in the short term, the automotive industry has no reason to remain optimistic about the chip supply problem, and once again warned of chip shortages.
In Antlitlitz's view, global chip inventories will remain largely constrained by supply issues, although there may be some signs of improvement by the end of the year.
At the same time, automakers are trying to reduce the number of chips needed for cars, and removing certain non-critical systems has become a common tactic.
For example, BMW has begun to deliver some vehicles without touch screens to consumers, while Cadillac has eliminated the parking assistance function of some models.
In fact, the lack of cores can also be found in the sales results of the new forces in the first month of this year. In January 2022, the sales of the new forces represented by "Wei Xiaoli" declined to varying degrees.
Some insiders have analyzed that this is due to the use of a large number of limited chips at the end of the year by car companies in order to impact last year's sales targets, which also causes chip supply in January this year to keep up.