Audi plant in Ingolstadt (archive): Production of A4 and A5 cars will be suspended from next week
Photo: DPA
More and more factories are running out of chips: car manufacturers and suppliers are suffering from the consequences of a semiconductor shortage.
Audi is now sending around 10,000 employees in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm on short-time work in the coming week.
VW had already reported bottlenecks in semiconductors in December, "now it has overtaken us too," said an Audi spokeswoman.
Volkswagen applied for short-time work for its plant in Emden, and the global shortage of microchips is also slowing production at the supplier Hella.
Thousands of employees on short-time work
At Audi in Neckarsulm, production of the A4 sedan and the A5 convertible will be suspended from Monday.
In Ingolstadt there will be two production lines on which A4 and A5 cars will be built from Thursday next week.
Short-time work is planned for up to 10,200 employees initially until the end of January, the spokeswoman said.
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At VW in Emden, short-time work should also begin next Monday and initially last two weeks.
According to the works council, around 9,000 employees are affected.
The company pointed out that, in some places, work continues as normal - for example in its own press shop or when realigning for the construction of electric vehicles.
The reason for the problems is that many chip companies switched their production to entertainment electronics during the car sales slump at the beginning of the Corona crisis in spring 2020 - parts are now missing in the car business, which has recently been improving again.
BMW has been spared production losses so far
Volkswagen is continuously examining countermeasures to limit the effects of the delivery bottleneck and thus the number of affected vehicles, it said in a message.
"Accordingly, Emden continues to drive on sight." According to the works council, around 10,000 fewer new cars could leave the assembly line in ten working days due to the loss of production.
What this means for annual production and what the failure can be made up for is not yet foreseeable.
The group had already announced on Wednesday that it would cut production at the main plant in Wolfsburg for several days.
VW sales director Klaus Zellmer said last week to the »Handelsblatt«: »We will fight for every car in 2021.« Golf production in Wolfsburg is particularly affected by the lack of chips.
Volkswagen hope for improvement in the second quarter.
"But nobody can predict with absolute certainty that we will then have a complete normalization of the situation."
Daimler has also announced short-time work for its compact car plant in Rastatt.
According to information from the works council, the Mercedes plant in Bremen cannot produce as planned.
The chip crisis hits the German auto industry in a sensitive phase.
After the slump in the corona crisis with a lot of short-time work, VW, Daimler and Co. were only just able to recover thanks to the strongly increased business in China.
At the same time, the manufacturers are in a profound structural transformation - away from the combustion engine and towards e-mobility.
The supplier Hella said that the high demand for electronic components had led to stop-and-go production in individual plants.
"We are already seeing significant effects," said CEO Rolf Breidenbach when presenting the figures for the first half of the 2020/21 financial year.
"Sometimes we had to stop our lines."
According to its own information, BMW has not yet registered any failures.
"The supply of our production sites with electronic components has so far not led to any interruptions in production," said a spokeswoman.
One observes the topic intensively and is in constant communication with the suppliers.
Icon: The mirror
apr / dpa