Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Expert: Because of the semiconductor crisis
German car production halved compared to 2017
There is no shortage of cars on German roads: by the end of the year there will be 585 cars for every 1000 inhabitants, according to Dudenhöffer. Nevertheless, the domestic auto industry is right to complain about the semiconductor crisis: The industry expert believes that its production volume has decreased drastically in this country.
The automotive location Germany suffered from the semiconductor crisis much more than other countries. This year, only 2.85 million cars will roll off the assembly line in this country, as a recently published study by the private Center Automotive Research (CAR) shows. That would be 50 percent less than in 2017 and as few as since the oil crisis year 1974, as study leader Ferdinand Dudenhöffer notes.
According to the study, factories in Germany are disproportionately affected by the semiconductor crisis. In the larger production sites in the USA, China, Japan, South Korea and Mexico, the percentage declines in production were significantly lower. In India, auto production even grew in 2021. The big German automakers VW, Mercedes-Benz and BMW each cut their domestic production more than their assembly in the foreign markets.
Example Eisenach: Warning signal in times of crisis
Dudenhöffer sees the numbers as a clear warning signal for the weaknesses of the location, which will nevertheless recover in the coming year. “In times of crisis, the location loses considerably,” said the auto expert. In addition to the high price and cost structures for electricity, for example, social security for employees through short-time working benefits also played a role. The Opel parent company Stellantis, for example, was happy to take the regulations with them at the Eisenach site, sent people on short-time work and continued to build the Grandland model located there in France.
However, the expert recently warned against wanting to observe the crisis in the German auto industry on German roads. The vehicle population continues to grow, reported the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” recently, citing figures from Dudenhöffer. According to this, 48.648 million cars were registered in Germany as of October 1, which corresponds to an increase of almost 400,000 cars compared to the beginning of the year. “This is an all-time high and it goes on and on,” said Dudenhöffer the paper. “There is absolutely nothing to be seen of the Germans turning away from their cars.” By the turn of the year, the number should even increase to 48.7 million. Then there will be 585 cars for every 1000 inhabitants, compared to 580 in the previous year.