India is not the sole market to be impacted by the slowdown in deliveries of imported semiconductors. The massive semiconductor supply bottleneck is causing considerable disturbances for manufacturers throughout global vehicle production.
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing sales slump in the automotive industry, leading semiconductor manufacturers had reassigned their production capacities to other customer sectors such as consumer electronics. However, automobile markets have now recovered significantly and the industry, including the Volkswagen Group, faces a shortage of the electronic components required.
For this reason, the Volkswagen Group says it needs to adapt production at its various Chinese, North American and European locations to the current supply situation in the first quarter of 2021. Models based on the MQB platform of Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Škoda, Seat and, to a limited extend, Audi are affected. Countermeasures and alternatives are continually being reviewed with a view to limiting the effects of the supply bottleneck and the number of vehicles affected.
Murat Aksel, designated Group Board of Management Member responsible for Purchasing, says: “To date, we have weathered the crisis well thanks to outstanding procurement and production management. However, we are now feeling the effects of the global semiconductor bottleneck. We are doing everything in our power to minimise lost production and to ensure that normal deliveries to customers can be resumed as rapidly as possible.”