Both Intel and Infineon have cautioned that the situation may persist throughout all of 2022, while Toyota is reported to be cutting vehicle production in September by 40%, from 900,000 units to 500,000 because of chip and labour shortages.
The global forecast for light vehicle production in 2021 now stands at 80.78 million units which represents an 8.3% increase over 2020 levels.
“Output lost to disruption to the Semiconductor supply chain is estimated to have reached 1.44 million units in Q1 and 2.60 million units in Q2,” says IHS’ Mark Fulthorpe, “visible downtime in Q3 now stands at 1.60 million units underlining the assessment that Q3 will continue to see disruption, and this is becoming more significant. While we do not expect to see levels of disruption like those in Q2, it now seems highly likely that the impact will be in the range of 1.8 to 2.1 million units for the quarter if the rate of downtime that we currently see was to continue through September. We expect Q4 will be exposed to ongoing disruption and this disruption is now expected to spill over into Q1 2022. Q2 2022 may be the point at which we look for the stabilization of supply, with recovery efforts now starting only from H2 2022. Across the full year, taking the estimates for Q3 and Q4, in addition to the losses already identified in the first half of the year, this would put the full-year risk associated with semiconductor shortages between 6.3 million to 7.1 million units globally.”
The situation in Q3 is undermined by some delay at Renesas. Though manufacturing capacity has been restored, the ability to fulfil shipments may not be possible until September. We are also seeing additional volatility due to COVID-19 lockdown measures in Malaysia where many back-end chip packaging and testing operations are performed. As this is more labor-intensive than the wafer fabrication processes, activity is more easily affected by public health measures that impact workforce participation.
IHS expects Q4 will be exposed to ongoing disruption and this disruption is now expected to spill over into Q1 2022. Q2 2022 may be the point at which we look for the stabilisation of supply, with recovery efforts now starting only from H2 2022.