Microchip crisis: Nissan forced to temporarily cancel production of several cars

Nissan has announced that it would temporarily cancel production at its plants in Smyrna, Tennessee; Canton, Mississippi; and in Aguascalientes, Mexico, due to the microchip shortage that is impacting the global auto industry severely.

Owing to the crisis that came as a new menace after the Coronavirus-related slowdown, some of Nissan's US production lines will be down from Friday through Monday, the automaker has informed. Production at some other plants will be idled for the weekend because of the same reason.

Several Nissan models have been impacted due to the production cut and slowdown. These affected models include the Murano, Rogue, Maxima, Leaf, Altima, NV Vans, Kicks, Versa, and March.

In addition to Nissan, other carmakers such as Volkswagen and Fiat Chrysler (now Stellantis) also said that they have been affected by the semiconductor crisis and forced to delay production of some models in an attempt to keep other production plants running.

Ford, General Motors too are among the automakers that have been affected due to the chip crisis. Both the American auto manufacturers have said that they will produce their high selling pickup trucks without computers due to the chip crisis. The pickup trucks that will be manufactured without computers will stay in the plants for some days and sent to the dealers later whenever the chips are available. This would create n inventory issue for both Ford F-Series and GMC pickup trucks in the North American market.

Apart from that, two other Japanese auto giants Honda and Toyota too have been forced to adjust their car production at various plants to cope up with the ongoing chip crisis.

According to the auto industry officials, the semiconductor manufacturing companies have diverted their production to consumer electronics during the worst of the Covid-19 slowdown last year. Hence, the shortage of automotive microchips has emerged across the world, which resulted in the global automakers being forced to cut production or adjust the manufacturing of vehicles. Despite the automakers recovered after the lockdown phases across the world, there aren't enough automotive microchips as demand for personal electronics boomed.