Enlarge image
Production at the main Audi plant in Ingolstadt could also be affected
Photo:
© Michaela Rehle / Reuters / REUTERS
The car manufacturers Audi and Daimler are drawing further conclusions from the lack of important electronic components.
Audi is restricting production at the Neckarsulm plant in the coming week; the production lines for the A6 and A7 models are to be shut down from April 26th to 30th.
The Augsburger Allgemeine had previously reported.
"The employees affected by the loss of work will be on short-time work for this period," said the group.
Production at the main plant in Ingolstadt could also be affected, as the company announced.
The short-time work for the two German plants was therefore only applied for as a preventive measure.
Daimler has also announced that in the near future it may be sending more employees than previously known on short-time work because important electronic components are missing.
In the coming weeks there could be production stops and short-time work due to the chip crisis "here and there", said CFO Harald Wilhelm.
He left it open which locations beyond the previously known ones could be affected.
Wilhelm gave no details about periods of time either.
Daimler had previously announced that it would initially send thousands of employees to the Mercedes plants in Rastatt and Bremen on short-time work until the end of next week.
No longer compensating for loss of production
The chip crisis also weighs on the sales figures, which could probably be below those of the first quarter, says Wilhelm.
Unlike in the past, Daimler no longer expects to completely compensate for the loss of production in the course of the year.
Mercedes will continue to ensure that particularly profitable models such as the S-Class luxury sedan do not suffer from the shortage.
"So far we have managed to keep the subject away from the S-Class, we want to keep it that way," said Wilhelm.
Enlarge image
Microelectronic components are manufactured with so-called wafers
Photo: Patrick_Pleul / picture-alliance / dpa / dpaweb
The global problems with the replenishment of electronic chips have been causing car companies, in some cases enormous problems, for weeks.
The chip company Intel sees no end to the global semiconductor bottlenecks, as the company announced.
The "unprecedented demand" strain the supply chains in the industry, said the new Intel boss Pat Gelsinger.
There is a lack of production capacities, material for circuit boards and components.
Daimler CFO Wilhelm sees the reasons for the bottleneck in unforeseeable failures.
Problems arose from a fire in a chip factory in Japan and from a power outage in a winter storm in Texas.
It can be assumed that these capacities will be available again in the second half of the year and that the situation will ease.
hba / dpa