It seems nowadays, one pandemic is being followed by another. After countries have begun easing COVID 19 related restrictions and people have started resuming to daily duties, another pandemic has started, this time, it comes in the form of global chip shortage. Many industries including the automotive sector have severely felt the effect. The most recent one in this list is Mercedes as it reported in German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that customer waiting times could go as long as over a year.
The confirmation came from the CEO Ola Kallenius. He said “Demand is huge at Mercedes-Benz and at the same time there are unfortunately severe limitations,” Kallenius told FAZ.
“For some models the waiting times are longer than we would like, in some cases over a year.”
Daimler CEO
Ola Kallenius
Things will only get worse before they get better. BMW and Mercedes both agree that the chip shortage issue could drag along as far as 2023, however the effects could be less severe in 2022. As you can imagine, this shortage is an underlying effect of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mercedes-Benz isn’t the only automaker being affected, Toyota has been forced to idle factories in the US, Canada, Mexico, and other parts of the world. Volkswagen has even started selling VW Fox in Brazil without the infotainment system due to the chip shortage, in its place is a plastic cover covering the blank in the center console. The only consolation is a slight price cut. The same outcome is reportedly coming to Ford models as well.