The bottlenecks in the global supply chains are causing problems for the auto industry.

The industry has left the valley of the corona crisis behind with increasing sales, turnover and profit figures.

It is also registering increasing registration numbers in important markets, so that it has even exceeded the business level of 2019 in some cases.

But the situation remains tense.

Because there is a lack of parts and components: from semiconductors to adhesives.

Christian Müßgens

Business correspondent in Hamburg.

  • Follow I follow

Susanne Preuss

Business correspondent in Stuttgart.

  • Follow I follow

Patrick Welter

Correspondent for business and politics in Japan, based in Tokyo.

  • Follow I follow

Hundreds of thousands of cars cannot be built and orders cannot be processed on time.

This is reflected in the proceeds.

Industry leader Toyota Motors just announced a cut in its production.

For Volkswagen, the number two in the industry, the shortage continues to have serious consequences.

While work in the factories in eastern Germany that specializes in electric cars will continue as planned in the coming week, production at VW's main plant in Wolfsburg will only be able to restart to a limited extent after the summer vacation.

At the Audi subsidiary in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm, around 10,000 employees have to extend their summer vacation and go on short-time work because parts such as semiconductors are missing.

"We drive on sight"

At Mercedes in Stuttgart, the current situation said: “We drive on sight.” Short-time work is ordered in individual plants at very short notice. This week the Mercedes plant in Bremen was only partially used, from this Friday production in Rastatt will be slowed down. The workforce in Sindelfingen, where the high-priced limousines are assembled, was put on short-time work for two days this week.

The so-called Factory 56 is not affected. The EQS comes from this highly automated factory, and one will always try to find suitable chips for this luxury electric sedan. Mercedes’s strategy is to keep production stoppages for the particularly high-margin models to a minimum. The fact that the delivery times are longer for the cheaper models is accepted, as Daimler CEO Ola Källenius recently said.

These days, however, all eyes were on Toyota. If the market leader came through the crisis with only a few wounds, he shocked many investors on the stock exchange with a warning on Thursday. The world's largest automaker announced that it would cut its global production by 40 percent or around 360,000 vehicles in September. The Toyota board named the lack of vehicle parts as the reason, because the spread of the novel corona virus in Southeast Asia led to production losses there. In addition, the global shortage of semiconductors is gradually making itself felt for Toyota as well. On the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the news was registered at discounts for Toyota and for affiliates. The price of the share went out of trading with a minus of 4.4 percent.