Reviews Volkswagen main plant throttles production due to low chips

The Volkswagen main plant in Wolfsburg throttles production for several days in January due to the semiconductor shortage.

© Hauke-Christian Dittrich / dpa VW throttles production at the main plant in Wolfsburg.

Due to the limited availability of chips, two production lines would be idle for four days each, the company and works council had applied for short-time work for the employees concerned, VW announced. It is about the production of the Tiguan and Touran models, among other things, on this Thursday the production lines will stand still for the first time. The Volkswagen brand is continuing to examine countermeasures and alternatives to limit the effects of the chip bottleneck, it said.

car manufacturers are shaking off some corona consequences

industry leader Volkswagen and large parts of the car industry have put away the worst consequences of the corona slump in spring. However, it is far from clear whether the catching-up process will continue after the significantly better third quarter. © Hendrik Schmidt / dpa-Zentralbild / dpa After losing billions in the spring in the third quarter, the world's largest car manufacturer Volkswagen does significantly better again.

Production will halt as VW tests more than 200 model variants. AMD attributed the performance to its computing and graphics segments.See Also: Is Bitcoin A Good Investment?Qualcomm develops and licenses wireless technology and also designs chips for smartphones.

Due to the delays, VW is throttling back production of some models at various plants , following in the footsteps of Daimler which last week blamed WLTP and a trade spat for lowering its profit guidance. VW will also close its Zwickau factory on some days and components manufacturing will face resulting

VW had already warned of bottlenecks and possible production cuts at individual locations in North America, Europe and China in the first quarter in mid-December. During the slump in car sales at the beginning of the Corona crisis in spring 2020, many chip manufacturers switched their production to consumer electronics - the car business, which had recently been improving, then felt bottlenecks. "We have a serious problem," said works council chief Bernd Osterloh of the German press agency shortly before the turn of the year. "There are no short-term delivery alternatives."

The day before, the works council at the VW plant in Emden had announced that there was also a risk of short-time working there due to delivery problems. A decision was still pending. The car manufacturer Daimler has also announced short-time work for its compact car plant in Rastatt due to a lack of chips.