Bad news for Mercedes and the company: According to experts, the semiconductor shortage and its negative impact on automakers will continue in the coming year. Alan Priestley of Gartner, an analyst firm, said that in some areas, such as memory chips, the situation may ease with the commissioning of new capacity from 2023 to 2024. In view of the different root causes of the problem, the recovery process of each sector will be different.
This Automobile manufacturers For example, they have been hit particularly hard by the “perfect storm” that combines technological change and the corona effect. When the demand for cars plummeted when the pandemic began, industries that traditionally operated at low inventory levels cut orders from chip suppliers. “After the market begins to recover later this year, they want to buy more chips again-but manufacturers are also shifting production capacity to other products that are in high demand.”
Another problem, especially for the automotive industry, was that a few years ago, when developing today’s models, certain semiconductor configurations had to be devoted to it-there were also higher requirements in terms of reliability. “The range of shifting to alternatives has also shrunk accordingly.” In addition, there are tens of millions of cars each year, and the market power of the automotive industry is far less than that of suppliers. smart phoneWho needs chips for hundreds of millions of devices.
Priestley emphasized that the surge in demand for laptops for working and studying at home during the pandemic has also promoted the use of existing chip factories.This makes it easier again semiconductor Use, such as those used in power supplies. However, it is in this area that capacity has declined over the years-and cannot be rebuilt in a short period of time.
