The automotive industry has been dealing with this semiconductor shortage for quite some time now, and this plague that affects the assembly of thousands of vehicles across the globe doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.
Fortunately, according to Tesla‘s founder, the crisis could be over sooner than expected. Indeed, Elon Musk, on the occasion of the Italian Tech Week, was reassuring on the duration, alleging that the crisis was going to be “short-lived” thanks to the construction of factories for the manufacture of these famous electronic chips necessary for the operation of the latest vehicles.
According to him, the crisis should not continue beyond 2022. The production capacity (of these semiconductors) should be reached next year. He also pointed out that Tesla has worked around the chip shortage by replacing the chips with alternative chips and rewriting the firmware to integrate the replacement technology into the vehicles to maintain production.
It will be interesting to follow the evolution of this crisis over the next few months, as not everyone shares Elon Musk’s vision. Several stakeholders believe that the problem could drag on until 2023, notably because of very strong market demand and limited supply.
This is the case of Daimler‘s president, Ola Källenius, who believes that the shortage could last until 2023, although not as severe as in recent months. The CEO likened the COVID-19 crisis to a traffic jam that will take time before things get moving again.
