In the past few months’ numerous car manufacturers around the world, from North America to Korea have had to suspend production due to parts shortages, namely computer chips.
Now comes news that South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co plans to suspend production at its No 1 Ulsan plant in South Korea from April 7-14 due to chip and component supply issues.
This plant is located some 414 kilometres south of the city of Seoul and is where the latest and most exciting Hyundai models are produced currently.
“We are closely monitoring the situation to take prompt and necessary measures and optimise production in line with the supply conditions,” Hyundai said in a statement.
The South Korean automaker said in a statement that the supply issues involve front view camera systems for the Kona sport utility vehicle (SUV) and power electric modules for the IONIQ 5.
The factory produces 311,000 vehicles annually, including the Kona SUV and IONIQ 5.
This factory ‘holiday’ will see a shortfall in supply of 6,000 units of the new Kona crossover and 6,500 units of the much-acclaimed IONIQ 5 electric vehicle.
Hyundai was until recently one of the automakers least affected by the chip shortage, largely because it maintained a large stockpile of chips unlike its global peers, Reuters reported last month.
Last week, Honda Motor Co Ltd and General Motors Co both announced that they would continue production suspensions at plants in North America for the coming weeks, citing the chip shortage as one of several reasons.
In January this year, Audi AG was forced to suspend its factory operations due to semiconductor shortages. This led them to produce 10,000 less cars this quarter.
Even German economic Minister, Peter Altmaier spoke to his Taiwanese counterpart Wang Mei-hua to address the issue with the chip manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker and one of Germany’s main suppliers.
In February this year, Mazda was faced with the same chip shortage that affected the production of 34,000 units of their popular SUVs, the CX-5 and CX-30.
A confluence of factors including factory shutdowns, booming demand for laptops and tablets, and sanctions against Chinese tech companies caused the shortage of chips in December.
Originally concentrated in the auto industry, the shortage has widened to affect a range of consumer electronics, including smartphones.
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