Škoda Auto cannot finish up to 5,000 cars a week due to a lack of chips. At the moment, the company has 33,000 unfinished cars. In an interview with Ihned.cz, Škoda Auto’s head of production and logistics Michael Oeljeklaus said.
Due to a shortage of semiconductor parts, Oeljeklaus said the company will probably cancel 60 shifts by the start of the August full holiday. “It is possible that production could be stopped for a whole day, i.e. three shifts at a time, or for several days, but of course we do not want to shut down production for a longer period,” he said.
Škoda Auto produces about 21,000 cars a week. A total of 3,000 to 5,000 of them cannot be finished because of missing chips. The carmaker’s biggest shortages are the ESP control unit in Octavias and window control units in virtually all models.
The company’s management is negotiating with the unions to keep production going even with a full holiday. In this case, the carmaker would focus on completing the cars in progress. “We would like to finish the 20,000 cars that are now sitting on our staging areas during these two weeks,” Oeljeklaus said.
He estimated chip supply could improve by the end of the year. “In the fourth quarter, the market will return to normal and we believe there will be enough parts to finish the cars we will have to shut down again in the interim,” Oeljeklaus hopes.
The staging area where the carmaker puts incomplete cars has a capacity of 55,000 cars.