Affected by multiple factors such as the supply chain, many car companies have stopped production. Since late March, Tesla, Nio and many other car dealers have announced the suspension of production, and the delivery time of new cars may be affected. However, some car companies said that they have started closed-loop management to keep production lines running stably and minimize the impact of the epidemic on production capacity.
NIO announced that it will stop production due to the impact of the supply chain
Today, NIO announced that since March, due to the impact of the epidemic, NIO's supply chain partners in Jilin, Shanghai, Jiangsu and other places have stopped production one after another and have not yet recovered. Affected by this, NIO vehicle production has been suspended, so the delivery of many user vehicles will be delayed in the near future.
Weilai said that the company will work with supply chain partners to strive for an early resumption of production under the premise of meeting the requirements of epidemic prevention. Under the epidemic, almost all car companies are facing pressure from the supply chain level. Since last year, many car companies have suffered from chip shortages, paying special attention to the management and attention to the supply of parts, and have also begun to step up direct contact and joint research and development with many suppliers.
Affected by the epidemic in various places, the supply of auto parts has once again lit up the "red light", at the same time, the rise in the price of battery raw materials has also continued to impact new energy automobile enterprises, affecting the production and operation of enterprises.
"A car can't produce a part. Affected by the epidemic in Changchun and Hebei, we cut off some parts in mid-March, relying on some parts inventory to barely support until last week. Recently, there have been epidemics in Shanghai and Jiangsu, and many partners cannot supply goods and can only suspend production. This situation is not ours alone, many manufacturers have suspended production. We are as anxious as everyone else and hope that the epidemic will pass soon. Today, Li Bin, chairman of Weilai Automobile, said.
Most of the car companies in Shanghai have stopped production, and some car dealers have closed-loop production
Shanghai car companies have been almost fully affected, and there are very few enterprises and production lines that continue to produce.
Since March 28, production at Tesla's Shanghai factory has been in a state of suspension, and this shutdown is the longest shutdown since Tesla's Shanghai factory started production at the end of 2019. According to the calculation of 2,000 electric vehicles per day, Tesla has lost at least 24,000 production capacity in this shutdown. Tesla informed employees and suppliers on April 6 that it expects the Shanghai plant to resume production at least until April 8, but as of today, Tesla has no latest news of resuming work.
At the same time, a number of joint ventures and independent brand car companies in Shanghai said that due to the impact of the supply chain, the production of the Shanghai production line has almost been suspended, and some car companies have said that the factory has not completely suspended production, and some of the production lines with small dependence on the external supply chain and relatively high inventory are still continuing to produce, such as stamping production lines. In addition, there are also workers who are also stepping up the maintenance of production line equipment to prepare for post-epidemic production.
However, some car companies said that they did not stop production. Recently, SAIC Passenger Vehicles has launched a number of new cars such as mg5 Scorpio, many of which are equipped with MEGA Tech 1.5T high-power engines, and the new cars are currently in a critical stage of capacity climbing. SAIC Motor Passenger Vehicle said it has launched closed-loop management to keep production lines running stably and minimize the impact of the epidemic on production capacity. Lingang Automaker now has more than 4,000 employees on duty, maintaining a dual-shift production rhythm as before the epidemic. At present, the engine factory employs more than 400 people and related parties, which can meet the demand for single-shift engine production, with a daily output of nearly 800 engines. In terms of supply chain, priority has been given to the transportation of risky parts to the Lingang base to ensure the normal operation of production.
The price of new energy vehicles continues to rise
It is worth noting that due to the impact of production, car prices may continue to rise in the first half of this year.
Just before the suspension of production, NIO issued a note on the price adjustment of its new energy models, saying that due to the impact of the rise in global raw material prices, from May 10, 2022, NIO will adjust the prices of its products. The starting price of ES8, ES6 and EC6 models will be raised by 10,000 yuan, and the starting price of ET7 and ET5 will remain unchanged.
Since the beginning of this year, the impact of the continuous sharp rise in global raw material prices, a number of new energy vehicle companies have carried out different degrees of price increases for their products, ranging from thousands of yuan to 30,000 yuan, such as ideal car, BYD, Xiaopeng Automobile and other car companies have recently announced the price increase of their models, and Tesla has been several rounds of price increases since the beginning of this year, and the increase of some models has been close to 10%.