Daimler expects short-time working until 2022

The car manufacturers have been feeling the chip crisis with full force for months. And improvement does not seem to be in sight. As reported by the "Business Insider" portal, citing company-related circles, the Stuttgart-based car manufacturer Daimler expects that the worst chip deficiency will not be overcome until the end of this year at the earliest. Internal planning is even assuming that the situation will not normalize until the middle of next year. The result: Daimler employees will probably also be sent on short-time work again and again until 2022. The basis for the assumption is a simple calculation: It is said that the production of the high-tech chips takes six to seven months. It has to start up again, and then the chips have to be distributed on the global market. The Daimler managers therefore preferred to plan so that the worst bottlenecks would not be overcome until the middle of next year. Daimler recently brought thousands of employees back from short-time work at the Mercedes plants in Rastatt and Sindelfingen. Meanwhile, other car manufacturers are still producing less: Audi had to send thousands of employees in Ingolstadt to short-time work at short notice in May due to the chip crisis. The parent company Volkswagen has also repeatedly cut back production due to missing chips and other electronic parts and announced short-time work. Despite record profits in the first quarter, the Wolfsburg announced further headwinds for the current months. The undersupply of semiconductors in the entire industry will "have more pronounced effects than before" in the second quarter and put a strain on profits, predicted VW CFO Arno Antlitz. Continental, from which Volkswagen procures many parts, also joined this plan. The supplier let it be known that he also does not expect the supply bottlenecks to subside until the second half of the year: "We see that the second quarter is likely to be the peak of the shortage and that it will get better then," said CFO Wolfgang Schäfer. The situation is so volatile that it is not possible to make a "forecast of the impact", a Daimler spokeswoman said, according to "Business Insider". "We are in close contact with both our direct and semiconductor suppliers and, if necessary, adapt our operating methods in individual plants." The fact that car manufacturers around the world are particularly suffering from the chip crisis is due to the fact that since the outbreak of the Corona crisis, suppliers have primarily been serving computer manufacturers and providers of entertainment electronics. When the demand for cars recovered faster than expected at the end of 2020 and the automotive industry urgently needed chips, the capacities were taken.