Last Friday (December 4), a news of "Volkswagen halt in North and South" pushed Volkswagen and its joint ventures in China to the forefront of public opinion. According to the news, due to the insufficient supply of chips, SAIC Volkswagen "can only stop production from December 4," and "FAW-Volkswagen will also enter a state of discontinuation from early December."

    In this regard, a relevant person from SAIC Volkswagen revealed that “Due to the shortage of global chip industry supply, the production of individual models of SAIC Volkswagen has indeed been affected to a certain extent, but there is no complete suspension of production. From the current situation, it is The impact of normal business operations is limited." "At present, the delivery of relevant vehicles to customers has not been affected," Xu Ying from the Public Relations Department of Volkswagen China said in an interview with a reporter from Economic Daily-China Economic Net. "We are closely monitoring developments and have coordinated with headquarters and related suppliers Work and actively take countermeasures."

    Xu Ying said frankly, “The uncertainty brought about by the new crown epidemic has affected the supply of certain automotive electronic components. The full recovery of the Chinese market has also further promoted demand growth, making the situation more severe and causing some car production to face interruptions. risk".

    In fact, the insufficient supply capacity of automotive chips is a current global industry problem, which has had a certain impact on global automotive manufacturers. According to foreign media reports, the multinational component giants Continental and Bosch have issued warnings of shortages of semiconductor components required for automobile production. Bosch said, "Due to the shortage of some semiconductor components, a bottleneck has appeared in the entire parts supply chain."

    Infineon Technologies, a German semiconductor company, said, "We are currently increasing investment to build a new chip factory in Austria, and we will also adjust our global manufacturing capabilities." "Although semiconductor manufacturers are already expanding production capacity, it will take 6-9 months to fill the current capacity gap," the mainland said on Friday that "current delivery pressure may continue until 2021."

    In order to cope with the current capacity dilemma, the Dutch semiconductor company NXP Semiconductors (NXP) was exposed to increase product prices across the board. NXP stated in a letter to its customers that “due to the dual impact of severe product shortages and increased raw material costs, the company had to raise the prices of all products”. NXP confirmed the authenticity of this letter, but declined to comment.

    Prior to this, Japanese semiconductor manufacturer Renesas Electronics (Renesas Electronics) was revealed to adjust the price of products such as power management ICs. In this regard, Renesas said that before the end of this year, the original price will be applied; and for existing orders and new orders shipped after January 1 next year, the new price will be applied. Another supplier, Mao Da, said that there is no plan to increase the price. Unless the upstream foundry price is fully increased, it will discuss with customers, otherwise it will not actively increase the price.