The auto business is doing better again, but semiconductors are scarce. That will last even longer, says Ford boss Jim Farley.
Ford is preparing for the fact that the auto industry will suffer from the semiconductor shortage for a long time to come.
“I think you can say with certainty that we will probably be missing important electronic parts by the end of next year,” said Ford boss Jim Farley on CNBC. The US auto giant is one of the manufacturers that have recently been particularly hard hit by the bottlenecks.
Ford announced an ambitious plan to expand its electric car production in the United States. In the state of Tennessee, the group wants to build a completely new plant with attached battery production. Two new battery factories are to be built in Kentucky. The new systems should be available by 2025. The investment is $ 11.4 billion and nearly 11,000 jobs are expected to be created.
It is about battery capacity for around one million vehicles per year, emphasized Farley. Ford sells around two million vehicles annually in the United States, more than a million of which are F-series pick-ups. Electric versions of these models such as the bestseller F-150 should be a focus for the new plants, said the Ford boss. In the turnaround to electromobility, the large US auto companies are working flat out to defend their most important product categories against attacks from challengers such as Tesla or Rivian.
The automotive industry is particularly hard hit by the semiconductor bottlenecks. One reason is that doing business with it is less lucrative for chip companies than selling to large electronics companies because of the relatively low number of units. At the beginning of the pandemic, many car manufacturers also had their own slump in demand – as a result, they canceled quantities that had already been promised by semiconductor companies. Now that the auto business is doing better, those chips are missing.
The cause of the shortage of semiconductors was, among other things, the increased demand for notebooks and other electronic products during the Corona crisis. But in general, every industry needs more chips, emphasized the boss of the processor specialist AMD, Lisa Su, at a conference appearance on Tuesday night.
To make matters worse, chip manufacturers had reduced their capacities for some types of semiconductors in the past few years in view of the initially weak demand and are now unable to replenish them quickly. At the same time, massive investments are being made in new chip capacities – but it often takes years for them to bear fruit.
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
