Honda Motor Co plans to suspend production at some plants in the US and Canada next week as the COVID-19 pandemic, a chip shortage and severe winter weather have affected its supply chain, a company spokesperson said.
The automaker is to halt work at plants in Marysville and East Liberty in Ohio, as well as others in Indiana, Alabama and Ontario, potentially for a week, the spokesperson said yesterday, without specifying the volume of vehicles affected.
Honda made 1.45 million vehicles in North America last year, down 20 percent from 2019. The Japanese company has 12 manufacturing plants in the US and one in Canada.
Photo: Reuters
Separately, Toyota Motor Corp said that the cold front had reduced supply of petrochemical products, affecting production in the US and Mexico.
Some lines, shifts or potentially entire plants are expected to be temporarily halted for several days in Kentucky, West Virginia and Mexico, spokeswoman Shiori Hashimoto said, without providing further details.
The bad weather has added to disruptions for automakers already battling a shortage of semiconductors, which are being gobbled up by consumer electronics companies trying to meet an increase in demand from users stuck at home during the pandemic.
Honda and Toyota already scaled back output at plants around the world earlier this year due to the lack of chips. Major tech companies have also warned about a serious imbalance in supply.
Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co has said the shortage could reduce Honda’s output by 300,000 units, while Toyota is less affected, because it is not as reliant on foreign semiconductor companies.
In Europe, the auto industry reported its worst February sales in eight years, because much of the region remains locked down to contain the pandemic.
Registrations plunged by one-fifth to 850,170 vehicles, the lowest total for the month since 2013, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association said.
Spain led declines among major markets with a 38 percent fall, while the UK shrunk 36 percent.
Europe’s struggle to inoculate citizens from COVID-19 risks tainting automakers’ more upbeat forecasts for the year.
Shuttered showrooms, slow vaccination distribution and economic damage caused by the virus call into question the high expectations for earnings recovery, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Michael Dean said.
Among the continent’s biggest automakers, deliveries for Renault SA fell the most at 29 percent, followed by Stellantis NV at 22 percent. Both manufacturers count the region as their most important sales hub.
Volkswagen AG fared marginally better with a 19 percent decline.
INVENTORY DOUBLED: Key parts have backed up in warehouses, halting notebook production, as Acer’s CEO said that a gradual reopening would not solve the problem PC vendor Acer Inc (宏碁) yesterday said that lockdowns in China to control COVID-19 upended key component supply and disrupted PC production, although chip shortages have been improving. While chip supply constraints largely eased in the first quarter, the company faces uneven supplies of key components due to COVID-19 restrictions in China, Acer chairman and CEO Jason Chen (陳俊聖) told an online news conference. “Semiconductor shortage was the biggest problem in the first half of last year,” Chen said. “Now, we are beset by a supply chain issue caused by China's lockdowns.” With key components unable to be delivered and backing up in
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which distributes Toyota and Lexus vehicles in Taiwan, yesterday introduced Toyota Motor Corp’s first all-electric sports utility vehicle (SUV), the bZ4X, joining rivals in vying for a share of the nation’s fast-growing electric vehicle market. Starting today, the bZ4X, with a price tag of NT$1.599 million (US$53,780), would be available for online purchase only and customers need to download a special app to place orders, Hotai said. Hotai has received 300 of the electric SUVs, it said, adding that it is not enough to meet robust market demand. A total of 229 electric vehicles were sold in the
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) has made further progress in its expansion into semiconductor manufacturing as its subsidiary teams up with Dagang NeXchange Bhd (DNeX) to build a 12-inch wafer fab in Malaysia. Big Innovation Holdings Ltd (BIH), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hon Hai, has inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with DNeX to collaborate on establishing and operating the semiconductor fab in the Southeastern Asian country, it said in a statement released by DNeX on its Web site. The fab is expected to produce 40,000 12-inch wafers per month, deploying 28-nanometer and 40-nanometer process technologies, the statement said. Under
E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技) yesterday said it would further expand capacity to cope with robust demand for e-paper displays used in e-readers, e-notes and electronic shelf labels, as the COVID-19 pandemic and rising inflation have not dampened consumer demand. Although rising inflation is weakening companies’ purchasing power, E Ink said that its customers have not scaled down orders for e-paper displays used in e-readers. “Reading is still the most affordable leisure activity that people have,” E Ink CEO Johnson Lee (李政昊) told an online investors’ conference in Taipei. As e-books are less expensive than paper books, “we have so far not seen
RSS