South Korea’s largest automaker Hyundai Motor Co is to suspend all domestic production this week because of a lack of parts due to a coronavirus outbreak in China, it said yesterday.
The global auto industry operates on tight supply lines.
The outbreak has disrupted the supply of parts for Hyundai, the company said.
“Hyundai Motor has decided to suspend its production lines from operating at all of its plants in [South] Korea,” the automaker said in a statement.
The order of suspensions would vary, it said, but all production would cease by the end of the week.
Hyundai operates 13 plants worldwide, including seven in South Korea, and last year sold a total of 4.4 million vehicles.
Its South Korean production amounted to about 1.8 million vehicles, or about 35,000 a week.
The outbreak has disrupted the procurement of auto parts called wiring harnesses, which are mostly produced at Hyundai’s assembly lines in China.
“The company is reviewing various measures to minimize the disruption of its operations, including seeking alternative suppliers in other regions,” Hyundai said.
If successful, production could resume next week, Yonhap news agency cited a company official as saying.
The virus that first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan — a center for the auto industry in the world’s second-largest economy — has resulted in at least 425 deaths and spread to more than 20 other countries.
It has prompted widespread business shutdowns in China, while airlines around the world have canceled flights, raising concerns about its effects to the world’s No. 2 economy and beyond.
Yesterday’s move came after Hyundai canceled overtime factory hours at the weekend to produce its flagship Palisade sport utility vehicle.
Markets have struggled in the past few days as the WHO declared a global health emergency over the outbreak, with analysts concerned about its effects on global economic growth.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure