Chip shortage enters 5th month Car manufacturers find their own solutions: less high-tech features

Automakers are trying to take away some of the features of their cars in response to the shortage of chips for cars. Pictured is the Peugeot 308 hatchback. Reuters

When the car manufacturers first encountered the chip shortage problem at the end of last year, they tried to shut down their plants to survive the difficult period, but when the crisis entered the fifth month and the situation worsened, they began to use creativity to maintain at least part of the production.

Nissan took out the navigation system from thousands of vehicles, which was standard equipment; Dodge RAM 1500 pickup truck used to monitor the blind spot of the “smart” mirror, from standard to upgraded equipped; Renault Arkana station wagon stopped providing a large digital screen behind the steering wheel – in order to save chips.

The century-old auto industry is accelerating its shift to provide smarter electric vehicles, but at this time, a chip shortage crisis has become a major test for car makers to see who can save chips in the right place, without hitting sales and profits hard – although millions fewer cars are expected to be sold this year.

TSMC chairman Liu Deyin said in a recent interview that the shortage of automotive chips could last until early 2022, and car manufacturers can’t just sit back and wait. One way to respond is to allocate scarce components to the more profitable best-selling cars, at the expense of other cars, which is the practice of Renault in France and Nissan in Japan.

Some other automakers are reducing add-ons, such as the Peugeot 308 hatchback, which reverted to an analog tachometer instead of a hard-to-find digital version with a chip; General Motors, which has a portion of its Chevrolet Silverado pickup without a fuel-saving module that gets about one mile per gallon less; and Nissan, which no longer has a third of its cars with pre-installed navigation systems. As for Renault Arkana buyers, they must now accept smaller screens, no navigation maps, and forgo the wireless charging cradle option for their phones.