Japanese carmaker Toyota has announced that two of its plants in Japan will be temporarily closed in March due to semiconductor shortages, Kallanish notes.

In February, downtime affected eight enterprises of the company and the shortage of cars intensified, so the volume of unreleased cars is in the hundreds of thousands.

In March, the production of cars will be suspended at the enterprises of Toyota Motor Kyushu and Toyota Motor East Japan. 

Thus, next month the company will produce 950,000 cars, which is 100,000 units less than planned. In February, the plan had to be reduced by 150,000 vehicles.

A significant reduction in Toyota’s production began last year. The total volume of unreleased vehicles will reach 500,000 units by the end of next month.

“With regards to the shortage of semiconductor related parts, we will continue to examine the situation and consult with all companies involved in considering the use of substitutes where possible in anticipation of a continuing shortage,” Toyota says.

Earlier this month, the EU announced a €43 billion ($49 billion) plan to become a major chip producer, to ease dependency on Asian manufacturers of the components (see Kallanish passim).

Volkswagen Group expects the short-term supply of semiconductors to the automotive industry to continue to be volatile in the first half. The carmaker expects that there will probably only be a real upward trend in 2023.

In 2021, global production of 9.5 million vehicles was delayed due to a lack of chips, the European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA) says. Although this year could show a modest recovery in global light vehicle production, supplier and market estimates still forecast production losses of 4-6m vehicles.