Every day Laurent Valy waits for his phone to explode, and warns him to send a text message saying his friends can return to work.
He is leading a coalition of 600 motorists at the Peugeot factory in Rennes, in northwestern France, closed due to a shortage of semiconductors that has reduced car production and closed areas around the world.
“There are colleagues who are struggling emotionally and at risk,” said CFDT at Brittany’s factory, adding that workers lose about one-sixth of their wages at home.
For Valy and other automotive operators, the story last Friday that Toyota, the world’s largest car manufacturer, reduced its prediction of years of design would be disastrous, indicating that the chip’s problem is not over.
Due to the closure of factories in Europe, North America and Asia, the shortage is expected to continue until next year.
Natural disasters in the US and Asia have left armaments manufacturers struggling to move forward with control, bringing about unprecedented and disrupting global shipping with chains.
An estimate of the potential impact on car manufacturing due to the decline has been evident in recent days.
Predicting AutoForecast Solutions 9.5m cars could be lost due to recently detected problems, about 1m more than last week’s forecast.
The situation is particularly tense in Asia, where AFS estimates that 3.4m could be reduced from the initial production of 2022.
A major concern for machine makers is that this trend could be as persistent as the manufacturers, which make multiple drivers on a number of automotive devices, cutting down on the automotive chips we use while prioritizing more lucrative services and telecoms.
Vehicles have already been pushed to the back of the line by technology and telecommunications companies, which require more expensive and more expensive chips that make semiconductor companies more expensive.
Even Toyota, which often avoids these problems due to contact with retailers and its major equipment, is starting to make sense.
They were forced to cut their annual production by 3% on Friday because it shut down factories in Malaysia, which produce small brake chips, and Vietnam, which produces semiconductors for used car wires.
Teruaki Nakatsuka, chief executive of Nissan arms manufacturer Jatco, told the Financial Times that the business was just amazed at the availability of components in the growing electronics industry.
“There are a lot of components at every level, even in places you would not expect. I think there was not enough information on the shortage of goods, including semiconductor manufacturers in Malaysia. ”
There has also been no opportunity for factory workers in the US, either. Ford and General Motors cut the rest in several factories in the country for two weeks in August and September, including those that make big profitable cars.
This meant a sharp fall in sales, with Ford reporting a 33% decline in August compared to the previous year.
However, in the meantime car teams have been able to overcome these problems despite rising prices and showing progress in producing the longest range of profitability.
In Europe, Stellantis, Ford, Volkswagen and Nissan all wrote stronger than they expected in the summer and added predictions for the year. Profitability has been around 10% in the first half of the year, about 5% over the full term.
Some automakers have shaved off their beards in order to maximize profits by shipping cars without all their advertising materials.
Stellantis, formed from the merger of Peugeot owner PSA and Fiat Chrysler earlier this year, has also reassured economists that they expect to see a change by winter.
Regarding the closure of the Rennes factory, he said the crisis affected “the entire automotive industry” and that it had been changing the situation in its fields since the outbreak began.
Daimler, VW and BMW say they believe their presence will begin in 2022.
But some warn machine makers could be in for a rough season.
Philippe Houchois, a researcher at Jefferies, said he was approaching the end of the golden season as he had less space to use trees, making them at risk of more expensive cars.
Seiichi Nagatsuka, vice-chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, said the uncertainty surrounding the chip’s continued problems.
“It’s difficult to predict the revision of the Covid-19 beyond the autumn,” he said.
For Valy, sitting outside a closed plant in Rennes, car manufacturers have had to accept some of the unexpected reasons for changes in the market – but they are not the only ones ignoring it.
“Where has the world been?” He asked. “Like paracetamol [which is mainly produced in Asia], we would have already realized that our instructors are made in Asia and this poses a problem for control. ”
Additional reports by Claire Bushey and Dan Dombey