General Motors has extended production cuts at three of its vehicle assembly plants due to the ongoing global semiconductor chip shortage.
According to Reuters, the American automaker has been forced to extend production downtime at its Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas, CAMI Assembly plant in Ontario and San Luis Potosà Assembly plant in Mexico until at least mid-March, at which point it will re-assess the situation and determine a potential production restart date.
Additionally, General Motors has been forced to start parking partially assembled vehicles at its Wentzville Assembly plant in Missouri and Ramos Arizpe Assembly plant in Mexico. Production work on these parked vehicles will be completed later this year once the semiconductor chip shortage has been addressed.
The GM Fairfax Assembly plant builds the Cadillac XT4 and Chevy Malibu, while the GM CAMI Assembly plant builds the Chevy Equinox. The GM San Luis Potosi facility also builds the Chevy Equinox in addition to the Chevy Trax and GMC Terrain. Wentzville Assembly, meanwhile, is responsible for production of the Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon, while Ramos Arizpe builds the Chevy Blazer.
“Semiconductor supply remains an issue that is facing the entire industry,” GM spokesman David Barnas told Reuters this week. “GM’s plan is to leverage every available semiconductor to build and ship our most popular and in-demand products.”
Many major automakers have been grappling with the global semiconductor chip shortage and have been forced to cut production at certain assembly plants, including Toyota, VW and Ford, among others. Taiwanese chipmakers have said they would prioritize the automotive industry or the consumer electronics industry as they try to ramp up production and address the chip shortage, but the supply gap is still expected to take several months to properly resolve.
General Motors has also been forced to halve production at one of its plants in South Korea amid the semiconductor shortage. While Reuters did not say which vehicles are affected by this decision, the automaker’s Bupyeong plant in Korea is responsible for building the popular Chevy Trax and Trailblazer and Buick Encore and Encore GX subcompact crossovers.
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Comments
The Terrain and Equinox are already hampered with the lack of a 2.0t for 2021 models. Now there will be a month’s delay. This makes me think the ’21 Terrain Denali will probably be canceled.
The strike at the end of 2019 (40+ days). Covid shutdowns in early 2020 (60-70+ days) with slow restarts and now this crap. They are prioritizing production of the vehicles that will turn them the most money. They are going to make it very hard to stay in the business of specializing in commercial/fleet sales. Typically once they return to full production they feed all of the big fleet (CAP) customers first and making us wait months and months to get inventory to sell from. I guess I need to freshen up my resume, especially with the potential of another big pile of crap coming through the toilet at any time.
Figures