Chip crisis: Ford plans to suspend F-150, Mustang Mach-E and Bronco production

Ford is reportedly planning to suspend the production of its popular vehicles such as the F-150 pickup truck, Mustang Mach-E and Bronco at its plants in Michigan, Illinois and Mexico because of a semiconductor supply chain crisis. The production suspension is scheduled to commence next week, reports AFP.

Besides the production suspension, manufacturing will be slowed down at other facilities in Missouri, Michigan and Kentucky. Ford will also eliminate overtimes at Oakville, Ontario plans in Canada due to the semiconductor crisis.

The prolonged shortage of semiconductors has been impacting the auto industry for more than a year. The crisis emerged due to the Coronavirus pandemic after the world entered into a massive lockdown phase during the first wave of the pandemic. Demands for consumer technology products were increased massively, which resulted in the chip manufacturers shifting their resources to microchip manufacturing for the consumer tech companies.

When the auto companies gradually reopened and restarted their production operations, the chipmakers struggled to realign their manufacturing process. This resulted in a massive disruption for the auto industry, which is still ongoing. Several auto majors such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda, General Motors, Ford were forced to halt their vehicle productions multiple times and the disruption is still continuing.

Modern cars heavily rely on chips. They are used as essential components in new vehicles, and primarily manufactured in Asia. The constant spikes of Coronavirus infections and lockdowns have been impacting the production of microchips, resulting in consequent production halts for the automakers. Besides that, several automakers around the world have been forced to increase the price of their vehicles as well, due to the spike in chip prices owing to the crisis. The delivery time periods of vehicles too have been elongated significantly for several popular vehicles.