Skoda to make fewer cars this year as chip shortage crisis continue

Skoda Auto will make about a quarter of a million fewer cars than what was expected this year as the shortage of semiconductor chips continue, the automaker said on Monday.

It said it expected the chip shortage to stabilize this quarter and slowly ease in the second half of the next year.

Skoda’s production lines came back on line on Sunday following a two-week outage caused by the chip shortage but the automaker said on Monday that it would still need to scale back production in the near future.

“This year, the company expects that it will not be able to produce approximately 250,000 vehicles by the end of the year due to missing parts,” the automaker said in a statement as it reported nine-month earnings results.

The shortages are having an impact on its production in the third quarter, the automaker added.

The chip shortage, which has hit automakers worldwide, emerges from a confluence of factors as automakers, which closed plants for two months during the coronavirus pandemic last year, rival against the sprawling consumer electronics industry for chip supplies. A factory fire suffered by Japanese chipmaker Renesas this year is also cited as a reason behind the chip shortage.