On the evening of March 16, there was another magnitude 7 earthquake off the coast of Fukushima, Japan, which caused a number of car companies and car suppliers to stop production, and due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the closure of the Ukrainian wire harness factory, the first quarter and second quarter of Europe is expected to reduce production by 700,000 vehicles, combined with the Japanese earthquake, the global production and sales in the first quarter will fall sharply. Volkswagen recently said it has transferred 50,000 to 100,000 vehicles of semiconductor products to assembly plants in China and the United States.
At present, toyota motor vehicle and Nissan motor vehicle are more obviously affected by the earthquake. Toyota Motor's engine plant in Miyagi Prefecture was discontinued and production is expected to resume on March 17. Toyota's march 17 in Iwate Prefecture remained in a shutdown, and Nissan's plant in Fukushima Iwaki City also suspended production, and the earthquake delayed the operation plan of the plant in northern Japan.
In addition, Toyota's supplier Denso and automotive chip maker Renesas also had factories affected, and Renesas Electronics said that its three plants in Japan are near the earthquake-stricken area. In the earthquake, two factories lost power overnight, and it took at least 2 days to restart production lines, and Renesas Naka's plant was a disaster, and in March last year, the plant had a fire that burned down 11 machines, accounting for 2% of the plant's production equipment. Successive disasters have once again caused another impact on the automotive industry, which was already affected by the shortage of semiconductors.