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Due to the global chip shortage and other problems, Volkswagen has become the earliest domestic car company affected by this problem, but as the core shortage problem has not been effectively solved, SAIC Volkswagen said a few days ago that it can only give priority to the production capacity of products with high demand.

According to media reports, due to the uncertainty brought about by the COVID-19 epidemic, the supply of chips for some specific automotive electronic components is still true. SAIC recently said that SAIC-Volkswagen is still affected by the chip shortage, and some models have been phased out of production. In order to ensure the stable development of the market, SAIC-Volkswagen will optimize its production schedule according to market demand and give priority to the production capacity of products with high demand.

A financial network confirmed this situation to the head of SAIC-Volkswagen, who said that in fact, the chip shortage is already a problem in the global industry, which has also had a certain impact on global automakers. In order to ensure the production capacity of some models, SAIC Volkswagen said it would closely monitor the situation and coordinate with Volkswagen China and suppliers around the world to optimize the allocation of resources as much as possible.

In fact, there are rumors that Volkswagen, which was the first in China to be affected by chips, stopped production at the end of last year. Affected by the supply of chips and other parts, the production lines of some models of the two joint ventures FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC-Volkswagen have been suspended. Volkswagen later said that the impact of the suspension of production due to chips was small, but in 2021, Stephan Wollenstein, China CEO of Volkswagen Group, said that the company lost tens of thousands of vehicles in China in December as global chip supply shortages affected its production.

On March 16, Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Dis stressed again at the 2021 news conference that the company had lost production of 100000 vehicles in the first two months of this year due to the global chip shortage and the severe cold weather in the United States, which will not be made up for this year.

Now, as the global chip shortage continues to escalate, the impact of lack of core is becoming more and more intense. in the first quarter of this year, SAIC-Volkswagen has halted production of some models periodically, which means that SAIC-Volkswagen and FAW-Volkswagen may only consider popular models. As a result, some new cars may lead to price increases, thanks to hot sales of models, more consumers hope to raise the car as soon as possible or will increase the price. At the same time, because the chip is part of the car parts, the increase in the price of the chip will certainly have an impact on the future price of the car.

Although compared with the impact of last year's epidemic, many domestic car companies have stopped production, and production and sales have all shown significant year-on-year growth this year, but according to the production and sales report disclosed by SAIC, SAIC-Volkswagen has seen a continuous year-on-year decline in production and sales in recent months, and the decline in production is even more serious than the previous month. Data show that production in December 2020, January and February 2021 was 125800, 85200 and 59800 respectively, down to-22.35%,-42.15% and-5.42% year-on-year, so it can be seen that although the domestic market has obviously recovered, SAIC-Volkswagen still suffered a decline in production capacity due to chip shortage.

Earlier, the Federation said that since the end of last year, the issue of automotive chips has attracted a lot of attention, but the overall pressure is not great. Insufficient production of domestic passenger cars does not mean direct market losses. But as more and more domestic car companies stop production, it means that the chip problem is also somewhat more than expected.

A number of multinational automakers, including General Motors, Toyota and Honda, have also been affected in China, according to other sources. The bottleneck in the production of new cars caused by the chip shortage will be revealed as soon as the second quarter of this year, and if the chip supply problem cannot be solved in the short term, then many carmakers will have no cars to sell.

Previously, Bernstein Research estimated that the global shortage of automotive chips in 2021 would result in a loss of production of as many as 4.5 million vehicles, equivalent to about 5 per cent of global annual car production. Clearly, it will take some time to resolve the current chip shortage, GlobalFoundries semiconductor executives have responded: "for some companies, this may continue for a longer period of time, and it is difficult to predict."

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