The numbers fell in the early hours, Wednesday 1er September: new car registrations in France are down 15% in August 2021 compared to August 2020 – which was already a month in decline (- 20%) -, giving this end of summer one of its worst trade records in the automotive industry. Over the first eight months of 2021, the French market has admittedly posted an increase of 12.8 % compared to the slump of a confined 2020 year, but it is down 23% compared to 2019, the last “normal” year.
The root cause of this situation is not so much the wait-and-see attitude of motorists as unprecedented production difficulties linked to a historic and lasting shortage of semiconductors, a raw material now as essential as metal or plastic to manufacture a car. “We are clearly facing a supply crisis”, summarizes Béatrice Foucher, CEO of DS (Stellantis group), who this week presented to the press her youngest, the DS 4.
The global phenomenon affects all manufacturers, all continents. Specialized consulting firms count in millions the number of vehicles that will not be able to be produced this year: between 4.5 and 5 million, according to the company AlixPartners, from 6.3 to 7 million for the British firm PwC. A recent study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) estimates that 7 to 9 million units will have been lost in 2021. With figures of this magnitude, we are talking about 10% to 12% of global automobile production. A real industrial cold snap.
Lack of anticipation
Admittedly, this shortage of microchips is not new. It appeared almost a year ago, but it picked up speed in the first half of the year. Above all, she’s gone to last. While at the beginning of the year we hoped for an improvement towards the end of 2021, the deadline has now been pushed back. “We do not expect stabilization before the second half of 2022”, provides BCG in its report. “Suppliers have invested to increase their production capacities, explains Laurent Petizon, General Manager for France of AlixPartners, but there is an incompressible production time which lasts two years. “
This major crisis has several origins: a lack of anticipation on the part of manufacturers and their suppliers regarding the strength of the global automotive recovery after the end of the confinements of 2020; cyclical accidents (fire at a site in Japan, closure of a factory in Malaysia due to renewed Covid-19); competition from consumer electronics more profitable for the microprocessor manufacturers; but also, and more structurally, a continuous increase in the electronic content of new vehicles.
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