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Hunger for chips: Electric cars require many more semiconductors than vehicles with internal combustion engines.
Photo: Sebastian Kahnert / dpa
On the evening of September 5, 2021, a handful of Greenpeace activists demonstrated outside in front of the pretty location not far from Munich's Viktualienmarkt.
Inside, the stage belonged to
Herbert Diess
(63).
Just over a year ago, on the eve of the opening of the IAA in Munich, the world of Volkswagen was different.
But not everything changes within a year: Volkswagen has not yet got the difficulties of getting semiconductors for its own cars under control.
On that group evening, Purchasing
Manager Murat Aksel
(49) said he expected bottlenecks by the end of 2022, but only to a very tolerable extent.
After that, the lack of chips should no longer be an issue.
Aksel did not have that hope exclusively, other manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz also stated at the beginning of 2022 that the situation would probably ease over the course of the year.
These expectations have not been fulfilled.
"We don't see any short-term improvement in the supply situation in the chip market," says
Sohil Hashemi
.
The senior manager from Porsche Consulting and senior partner
Hagen Radowski
took a closer look at the chip market for a study.
manager magazin has the analysis in advance.
The picture for the automotive industry is sobering: In the future, manufacturers will primarily need semiconductors in technology nodes larger than 40 nanometers.
Unfortunately, there is currently "hardly any investment" in factories that produce them, Hashemi explains.
These chips are particularly important for electric cars, since voltage regulators and power plugs, for example, and also LED light drivers do not work without them.
Stromers require significantly more semiconductors than new cars with combustion engines.
There are 5,000 to 7,000 chips in the electric models currently on the market, and the trend is rising.
The result: In the foreseeable future, some car plants will not be working to capacity even if demand is right.
This causes trouble at Volkswagen, for example.
General works council chief
Daniela Cavallo
(47) had reprimanded the board at the last works meeting in June for the situation in the main plant in Wolfsburg, which was "more severe than ever".
Just 190,000 new cars rolled off the production line there in the first half of the year;
570,000 were planned for the year as a whole.
VW is miles away from the 800,000 cars that rolled off the assembly line here every year.
Last year, the production of the Volkswagen group fell to almost 8.3 million cars, the lowest since 2010.
In 2019, before the corona pandemic and the lack of chips, Europe's largest car manufacturer had built a good 10.8 million units.
What sounds like a crash has so far done little economic harm to most automakers.
Many earn better than ever, in times of scarcity they do not have to give buyers discounts.
Another example is Volkswagen: Although Europe's largest carmaker built almost 2.5 million fewer vehicles in 2021, it reported significantly more profits of almost 20 billion euros than in 2019 (almost 17 billion euros).
Due to the scarcity, most manufacturers have so far preferred expensive and therefore high-margin vehicles in production.
Good for corporations, bad for customers.
Not only do they have to accept higher prices, they also sometimes have to wait a long time for their new cars.
For example, Audi specifies the delivery times for a Q8 as around 15 months, while a Q4 e-tron currently has a lead time of around 18 months.
This cannot go on forever, warns Porsche Consulting expert Radowski.
"The automotive industry has to focus primarily on customer satisfaction. It has to work actively to get satisfactory volume figures back."
Crucial for this: strategic semiconductor management.
"Staying in task forces is the wrong way."
Car manufacturers would have to take on more responsibility, take responsibility for digital concepts themselves and be able to specify the chips themselves.
The role of suppliers is likely to shrink
So far, this has mainly been done by the suppliers for VW, Mercedes, BMW and Co.
"But it's no longer enough to simply order a control unit from a supplier and not know what hardware is in it," warns Radowski.
Before the semiconductor crisis, the car manufacturers would not have spoken the language of the chip manufacturers at all.
In the meantime we are getting closer.
It would be conceivable in the future, for example, for an automobile manufacturer to order and pay directly from the chip supplier.
The corresponding semiconductors could then be distributed to other component suppliers as required.
Radowski estimates that anyone who speaks directly to the chip manufacturers also has the opportunity to leverage completely new technological potential.
The consultants are convinced that this will not fail due to the willingness of the chip industry.
"Semiconductor manufacturers like to talk to the car industry. It's nice to say that my chips are installed in a specific model and not just in any control unit," says Sohil Hashemi.
Another trump card: While cars are developed for many years, the cycles for manufacturers of consumer electronics, for example, are significantly shorter.
"That creates reliability."
However, the majority of car manufacturers have not yet succeeded in placing these advantages with chip manufacturers.
"Anyone who produces in large quantities usually negotiates hard about the price - and then is not necessarily given preferential delivery," says Hashemi.
"Many chip manufacturers are not aware of the advantages of working with the auto industry."
A further approximation is therefore necessary.
Hashemi believes that anyone who is prepared to do this and secures the critical semiconductors in direct exchange with the chip manufacturers "can come before the wave".
"If you miss that, you'll only get crumbs from the cake."
In any case, the race has begun, affirms Radowski.
So far, companies that carry little baggage from the past have been in the best position.
In addition to Tesla, the experts named Nio as an example.
Herbert Diess had long since chosen these newcomers as Volkswagen's new main competitors.
As is well known, the main act of the Volkswagen evening before the IAA has now been sidelined a good year ago.
At that time, Murat Aksel and
Oliver Blume
(54) were hierarchically at the same level as group board members.
Today, Blume is the boss who outshines everything.
Aksel, in turn, was downgraded by the supervisory board to "Member of the Extended Group Management" right at Blume's start.
Successes in the chip crisis could help Aksel to improve his standing again - always more than hasty announcements.
