The lack of core is still the main theme of this year's automotive industry, at least in the first half of the year.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Bosch CEO Stefan Hartung said he expects chip shortages to improve significantly in the second half of the year and is expected to return to normal supply in 2023.
The world's largest supplier surpassed pre-pandemic revenue in 2021, totaling €78.8 billion ($90 billion). The EBIT margin was 4 percent, up from 2.8 percent a year ago, but well below the internal target margin of 7.5 percent and lower than some competitors.
Much of this is due to weaker growth in its Mobile Solutions division, which includes automotive components, which generates most of Bosch's revenue, and in part due to a lack of chips.
"Last year, we felt very clearly that we didn't have enough chips to meet demand. By 2022, things will improve, especially in the second half of the year," Hartung said, noting that even devices that make chips need chips to work, so supply outstrips demand. "Hopefully, in 2023, we can work at the pace we want."
Xu Daquan, executive vice president of Bosch China, also told Che Yun that the chip supply situation is still difficult this year, and he hopes that next year will be better, he further said, "The supply situation in Q1 this year is even worse than last year's Q4." Xu Daquan said that the reason why the lack of cores is still not solved is that "the output of chip suppliers cannot keep up with the needs of automobile manufacturers."
Intel, the world's second-largest semiconductor company, also attaches great importance to chip manufacturing. Its CHIEF EXECUTIVE, Pat Kissinger, wrote in an article in Semiconductors Everywhere: "While the industry has been working tirelessly to ensure there is enough semiconductor wafer capacity to meet expected demand, we expect the tight supply situation to continue at least until 2023." ”
Kissinger argues that the unprecedented shortage of industry-wide chips highlights the need for the ability to make more semiconductors and a more diverse, safer and more balanced supply chain. He further said, "In the second half of this decade, as Intel and other players in the industry begin to build more fabs, the tight supply situation will improve and be able to meet the expected doubling of demand." ”
The automakers involved have also expressed their predictions about the future of chip supply and are trying to find ways to deal with it.
Earlier last week, Volkswagen said that the lack of cores will continue to plague them, and it does not expect the lack of cores to end this year, and cautiously said that the second half of the year should ease slightly.
In an interview with Automobilwoche, Volkswagen's head of board procurement, Murat Axel said: "The lack of cores will continue to affect us at least after the first half of this year. This is clearly a structural issue, he said, as demand from the automotive industry will continue to rise.
Axel further said that by 2023, when more semiconductor production capacity is up and running, it should be easier to make reliable predictions.
Volkswagen Group's global sales of 8.88 million units in 2021 decreased by 4.5% year-on-year, and the main reason for the decline was that chip supply could not keep up. The Volkswagen Group missed the opportunity to catch up with Toyota, which sold 10.5 million vehicles in the whole year, becoming the world's number one for two consecutive years.
There's a reason automakers are wary of chip supply, and they're already suffering from a lack of cores at the start of 2022.
Earlier this week, a Ford spokesman said it had to plan to suspend or cut production at eight plants in the United States, Mexico and Canada next week due to chip supply constraints.
A day earlier, Ford had also warned that a shortage of chips would lead to a decline in car sales this quarter. The good news, though, is that the company expects a significant improvement in sales in the second half of the year.
Toyota Motor, whose supply chain management has always been rated as excellent, is now suffering from a lack of cores.
Toyota said it expects to lose 100,000 to 200,000 units in March this year due to chip supply problems. Toyota has therefore had to drastically lower its sales and production targets for this year.
According to the Nikkei Chinese Network, a Toyota executive said that "the current production cut around october per month does not know how long it will last." Toyota is struggling with the problem of sourcing semiconductors.
By using fewer scarce chips, and by quickly rewriting software, Tesla has consistently outperformed other manufacturers in supply chain management. In the context of lack of cores, the company sold 936,222 new cars worldwide in 2021, a year-on-year growth rate of 87%.
Although Tesla's response to chip shortages is higher than the industry," it is not a chip manufacturer after all, "we still expect to be limited by the shortage of chips and other components this year," Musk said on Tesla's 2021 Q4 earnings call, which may not ease until next year.
Therefore, in order to go all out to catch sales, Tesla will not have any new cars in 2022, "We will not launch new models this year." Musk said, "If we launch new cars, our total car production will decrease." ”
Tesla expects its own deliveries to easily exceed 50 percent in 2022, meaning it will sell more than 1.4 million units this year.
In order to complete this year's sales target, Tesla has made a new move in response to the chip shortage.
Recently, according to two internal employees and an internal letter source, Tesla decided to remove one of the two electronic control units in the bogies of some Chinese-made Model 3 and Model Y cars, which has affected the delivery of new cars to China, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and other parts of Europe.
It is worth mentioning that Tesla does not intend to inform customers of this decision, because one of the above two accessories is a redundant backup, and taking one of them will not affect the daily driving safety, but may affect the realization of the L3 autonomous driving function.
It is clear that Tesla is unlikely to deliver new L3-enabled cars to customers in the short term, which is the ultimate reason why it dared to make the decision to "reduce allocations".
To make a certain degree of "reduction" of missing chips, Tesla is not an industry precedent. Previously, Ideal Auto and Xiaopeng Motors have also made similar plans. The difference is that they all inform the customer in advance.
Since the beginning of this year, stronger players such as Toyota and Tesla have also had to make compromises in the face of chip shortages. It can be seen that the current chip supply situation is still not optimistic.
Recently, data released by AutoForecast Solutions, an automotive industry data analytics company, shows that as of February 6, global car production cuts due to chip shortages were about 370,500 units, an increase from the cumulative production cut of 230,700 units as of January 30. The agency predicts that the cumulative production reduction in the global auto market this year will exceed 1 million units to 1.0885 million units.
Thankfully, compared with 2021, where the lack of cores is the most serious, the situation in 2022 is still optimistic. Last year, global automobile production was reduced by more than 10 million units.