Despite a global shortage of automotive chips, Continental decided not to produce semiconductors on its own. Automobilwoche, a sister publication of the European Automotive News (Automotive News Europe), quoted Gilles Mabire, the chief technical officer of Continental Automotive Group, as saying: "We studied it, but finally decided to give up."
Gilles Mabire told Automobilwoche that although the situation will remain "tense" in 2022, he expects the chip crisis to ease from 2023.
Continental plans to work more closely with suppliers and customers to change chip designs in order to become more flexible, change chips faster if necessary, and quickly switch to another supplier rather than producing their own chips.
"chips are in short supply everywhere, and semiconductor technologies vary from component to component," Gilles Mabire said. You can't solve this problem through internal manufacturing in a single area. Experts are needed in this area, and the auto industry itself is too small to be competent. "
He also said that reducing the number of semiconductors installed in cars will not solve the supply bottleneck.
"looking ahead, the shift to central computing electronic and electrical architecture may indeed reduce the number of processors and chipsets," Gilles Mabire said. "but at the same time, the level of complexity and performance has also improved significantly. So it's hard for me to imagine that we would use fewer semiconductors to solve the problem. "
The most important lesson of the chip crisis, says Gilles Mabire, is that "we have to make longer-term plans and work more closely with suppliers and customers."
Gilles Mabire pointed out that in the future, Continental hopes to "consider the supply of semiconductors as early as the strategic planning stage, so that if there are possible bottlenecks, we can send a signal as soon as possible."
