Under the influence of the overseas epidemic, the shortage of automotive chips continues to worsen, and the auto giants may cut production even worse than the market thinks.
Shares of Toyota, the world's largest carmaker, plunged 4.42% in late trading on Thursday after the Nikkei reported that Toyota would cut production by 40% in September because of chip shortages.
Similarly, on Thursday, Volkswagen, the world's second-largest carmaker, announced that it might need to cut production further because of tight supply of semiconductors.
Shares of Japanese and European automakers and auto parts suppliers collectively weakened on Thursday. As of press time, in the Japanese market, Honda closed down 2.73%, Nissan fell 2.63%, Toyota closed down 4.42%, and Ericsson Seiki fell 5.23%. In Europe, BMW, Daimler, Renault, Strandis and Volkswagen all fell more than 2 per cent.
Volkswagen expects chip supply in the third quarter to be very tight and volatile. "We can't rule out further changes in production." Volkswagen said it expected chip shortages to limit production by the end of the year and sought to make up for the shortfall as much as possible in the second half of the year.
On Wednesday, South Korea's Hyundai Motor also announced that it would reduce production at its factories in the United States because of chip shortages. It is said that Hyundai's plant in Alabama, which was shut down for a week last month, will cut production from Tuesday to Friday. Hyundai shares fell 2.82% on Thursday.
Maruti Suzuki, India's largest carmaker, also expects car production to fall by 30-40 per cent in August from 11-120000 to 50, 000-60, 000 because of chip shortages. It is said that a number of car factories under the company have stopped production for many weeks in a row.
Some in the market had expected that the second quarter of this year would be the period when the auto industry would be hardest hit by chip shortages, but this expectation may seem too optimistic as the overseas epidemic worsens. Infineon, the world's largest supplier of automotive semiconductors, has been forced to suspend production for two months at a plant in Malaysia since June as a result of the epidemic. According to industry sources, the production lines of many automotive chip factories in Southeast Asia have not yet been restored.
(Reinhard Ploss), Infineon's chief executive, said on August 3rd that he was doing his best to solve the problems encountered throughout the supply chain, but there was no denying that it was very difficult to implement. The automobile industry will face "serious supply constraints of the entire industry chain", and it will take a long time to restore the balance between supply and demand.
According to Susquehanna Financial Group, the global chip delivery cycle reached 20.2 weeks in July, an increase of more than eight days over the previous month. This is the longest waiting time since at least 2017.
