GM extends North American plant shutdown period Chevrolet and other models are affected

It is reported that due to the shortage of chips in the global automotive industry, North American plants that have previously suspended or cut production will continue to be asked by GM to reduce production.

GM said it would stop production at its assembly plant in Wentzville, Missouri, for two weeks from March 29th. In addition, GM's shutdown at its Lansing, Michigan plant was extended by two weeks. It is reported that the factory has been shut down since March 15.

GM's production cuts will affect models such as medium-sized pickups, Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon, Cadillac CT4 and CT5 and Chevrolet Camaro. GM spokesman David Barnas said GM expects profits to fall by as much as $2 billion this year.

In addition, GM will bring forward the scheduled plant shutdown by two weeks, from May 24 to July 19, to "have more time to produce products" in the second half of the year, according to (United Auto Workers union), the local UAW union.

In addition to General Motors, another American auto giant, Ford, said on March 24 that it would cut production of Quanshun trucks at its assembly plant in Kansas City, Missouri this week because of chip shortages.

It is worth mentioning that Japanese automaker Honda said as early as March 16 that Honda's plants in the United States and Canada would temporarily suspend some production from March 22 to March 26. A Honda spokesman said the suspension of production at Honda's factories in the United States and Canada for a week was affected by the epidemic, port congestion, chip shortages and extremely cold weather.

Shortly afterwards, Toyota also announced that due to the cold wave in the United States, power outages in Texas and stagnant supply of resin parts and other factors, Toyota will suspend production at its four-seat vehicle and engine plants in the United States and Mexico. It is reported that the capacity compression caused by the lack of semiconductors in the automotive industry has spread to resin parts.

Meanwhile, late last week, Renesa Electronics, one of the world's largest suppliers of automotive microchips, stopped production at a plant in Japan because of a fire, and it will take a month or more to fully resume production. This makes the auto industry, which is already short of chips, even worse. About 2/3 of the 300mm wafer production line affected by the fire was made of automotive chips on March 19, according to Yingli Shibata, chief executive of Renesas Electronics.

Since the chip shortage crisis broke out in the automobile industry at the end of December 2020, it has become the new normal for car companies to stop or reduce production. The global shortage of automotive chips in 2021 is expected to reduce production of 2 million to 4.5 million vehicles, equivalent to nearly 5 per cent of global annual car production in the past decade, according to BernsteinResearch, an independent asset research firm.