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How the automotive industry needs face the crisis in component supplies

How the automotive industry needs face the crisis in component supplies

The large car producers – like Volkswagen, General Motors, Daimler Mercedes Benz and Stellantis – need to be able to face the global crisis in semi-conductors also for the years to come, strategically redesigning their cars and finding effective alternatives to components that are becoming difficult to obtain.

At the same time, delays in the supply chains from the Far East will persist in 2022: as a matter of fact, the production capacity of microprocessors will remain limited in the long-term since the large oriental producers seem not to be interested in investing their capital to increase the volume of supplies of semi-conductors (used above all in latest-generation car models). Car manufacturers will, therefore, have to make great efforts to monitor supplies, manage the continuous delays of future deliveries and search for alternative ways to stem the crisis as soon as possible.

The automotive industry will have to accelerate the technological transition towards more advanced and centralised electronic architectures, avoiding as far as possible components which are obsolete or being discontinued and, in addition, no longer interesting for the core-business of electronic giants such as TSMC, Samsung, Intel and Global Foundries.

In 2021, the shortage of chips created line stoppages in the production chains of many vehicles, reducing deliveries to below even those of 2020, the year of the forced closure of factories due to the health emergency. Of all the car manufacturers, Stellantis NV seems to be the Group that has been most hit by the chip shortage.

At strategic level, the vehicles of the future will have to be redesigned with multifunctional on-board computers, thereby reducing the number of electronic components necessary for each vehicle. Vehicle control electronic architectures which contain latest-generation chips will, therefore, need to be rapidly introduced.

Current vehicles, in fact, have a decentralised electronic system, with many separate semiconductors that control single functions: today, vehicles contain on average 1,400 electronic components subject to supply shortages which can lead to complete line stoppages, also with the absence of a single chip.

According to the statistics, in 2021 alone, the components crisis caused sector losses for 210 billion dollars of sales.

The experts forecast that in the next few years there will also be shortages in the supply of resins, metals and rubber. For this reason, Reinova is ready to support its partners in the validation of better and alternative solutions, guaranteeing in this way production continuity. The industry will have to face any possible shortages in a strategic and structured way, using the services of consultancy companies able to test and compare the performances of new technologies.