From the evening of March 16 to the early morning of March 17, local time in Japan, three strong earthquakes with a maximum magnitude of 7.3 occurred in the Fukushima area of Japan, and caused power outages in fukushima and Tokyo. The epicenter area is home to a number of important semiconductor and automotive parts plants, including Shin-Etsu Chemical, Shenggao, and Renesas Electronics. Affected by this, Honda Motor Company will suspend 18 production lines at 11 plants in Japan next week, and Nissan Motor also suspended production at the Iwaki plant in the early morning of the 17th.
The impact of the obstruction of semiconductor production on the automotive industry
The earthquake is undoubtedly a heavy earthquake for the semiconductor industry, Renesas as a major factory in Toyota Motor's "production line identification", the world's third largest automotive chip company in 2021, and the world's largest supplier of microcontrollers (MCUs), with an international market share of 19%. The shutdown of the Renesasak plant will result in two-thirds of the automotive chips being unavailable.
As the most important part of the car, even if the production is resumed after the disaster, the chip with "0 defect rate" cannot be produced at the first time. It is reported that the earthquake affected the precision equipment and chip inventory of the plant, especially the use of sensitive components such as semiconductors manufactured by precision machinery, before putting into production, technicians need to re-debug the temperature and data of the entire production line of equipment, only the time required for debugging and the uncertainty of the earthquake, the accurate time to resume work is difficult to predict, and the global "core" famine will also be aggravated.
Before there was the epidemic raging, there was the Russian-Ukrainian war, and then there was a strong earthquake in Japan. Under the situation of lack of "core", the supply chain is again disrupted. For Japanese car companies, it can only be described as "disaster is not a one-way street". As early as the end of February, Toyota shut down 28 production lines at 14 factories in Japan due to a cyber attack on a supplier's computer system, which caused Toyota to lose 13,000 vehicles. The projected production of 2.8 million units in April and June was also lowered to 2.5 million units, a decrease of 300,000 units from the original plan, but an increase of about 10% year-on-year. In the next April, judging from the announcement issued by Toyota Motor of Japan, due to the spread of the epidemic and the shortage of parts, major factories will also stop production on the wrong day, involving Toyota Motor's hot models Corolla, Camry, etc., and the factory shutdown is up to 9 days. As of press time, Toyota Motor's suspension plan is subject to the following table.
Damage to the industrial chain increases the cost of the car
The sudden suspension of production by Japan's largest chip supplier due to natural disasters has undoubtedly made automakers worse. With the acceleration of the "three modernizations", the demand for new energy vehicles has risen rapidly. The use of new energy vehicles for semiconductor chips is twice that of traditional fuel vehicles, subsidies decline + "core" famine ordered the automotive industry as a whole in a state of "sharp increase in costs", domestic and foreign new energy vehicle companies have also adjusted prices, and the future of automobile production will also be largely subject to the supply of chips.
According to the latest report from S&P Global Mobility, global production forecasts for 2022-2023 were revised down by 2.6 million units, with adjusted projected production forecasts of 81.6 million units in 2022 and 88.5 million units in 2023, respectively. In the worst case scenario, it could see a reduction of 4 million units in 2022 and 2023, respectively. At the same time, the situation of limited production capacity may continue until 2023, according to the data, consumer demand is 10 million vehicles higher than the achievable production this year, due to the rise in raw materials, oil prices, the weakness of the stock market and other factors, so that the gap between demand and production to about one-third.
Auto network comment: The haze of "lack of core" has not dissipated, and the automotive industry is full of difficulties. Factors such as the "9 yuan era" of oil prices, chip shortages, and soaring nickel are also inhibiting consumer demand. The worsening of the local epidemic has led to the suspension of production at several Chinese auto plants, including Toyota and Volkswagen plants in Changchun and automakers in Shenzhen. It has brought many uncertainties to the Chinese auto market, and the automotive industry is also facing unprecedented challenges.