The General Motors Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas City, Kansas, will be down until August 16th due to the ongoing global microchip shortage.
The plant downtime was announced in a letter sent to General Motors dealerships. The Fairfax facility is responsible for production of the Chevy Malibu sedan and Cadillac XT4 crossover.
The General Motors Fairfax Assembly plant has been idle since February, once again due to the semi-conductor chip shortage. The facility was originally slated to remain offline until the first week of July, but now, that downtime has been extended until August 16th.
The current Fairfax Assembly facility opened in 1987, and employs roughly 2,260 employees.
The global microchip shortage has resulted in widespread production disruptions for the entirety of the automotive industry. It’s estimated that the shortage has forced General Motors to cut production of more than 278,000 units thus far.
In addition, GM has reduced feature availability for some models – for example, some models in the automaker’s full-size truck lines are no longer equipped with Active Fuel Management and Dynamic Fuel Management, a move intended to reduce the number of microchips required to build affected models.
GM predicts the shortage could eat into annual net earnings by as much as $2 billion.
What’s more, General Motors has adopted a “build-shy” strategy wherein popular models are built without critical components that require additional microchip supplies. The unfinished vehicles, numbering in the tens of thousands, are subsequently parked as new microchips were sourced. It was recently reported that some of these incomplete vehicles have been finalized with new chips and shipped to dealers.
General Motors is currently seeking a long-term supply contract to mitigate the affects of a potential microchip shortage in the future. General Motors also announced that it anticipates improved first-half financial results compared to those originally forecasted.
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Comments
This entire micro-chip issue and inventory problems is getting really bad. Our dealership is so low on Mazda it’s not even funny. Volvo is better, but not much. You know it’s bad when people are actually paying $3-5,000 OVER MSRP for a Toyota or Mazda! Just plain stupid.
I’m at the point where I tell customers that if they can, to wait until after November.
so how do you explain the envision? gm has to cut the price by 10% to draw interest.
It’s bad when you spend more time telling customers I can’t than I can. Yes, I’ll take an order but I have no clue when you’ll get it. Customers don’t want to work with that program. I wouldn’t either.
Richard:
Then they shouldn’t place an order.
I’d love an XT4 but there are all of 6 within a 100 miles distance of me, none of which I want. I’ll have to wait until Fall once inventory builds again.
I too will, wait, but probably until next year sometime so I can see the ’23, and choose between the 2 while I can still order a ’22. -That’s what I did when I ordered my present ’07 Honda powered Vue.
Sick on hearing about a chip shortage. Mary and her lower case GM cronies better get on the ball and rectify this mess.
Mary B needs to be shown the Exit….GM is floundering while Ford releases more interesting & exciting vehicles. I am depressed by the stark all black interior of my ZR2 truck and the fact that the door pockets will literally store NOTHING! Who lets these failures of design & styling get released to market….Things better change quickly!
That’s not going to happen.
Mary & Co have to stay focused on kissing Elon’s bum.
Mary was on Cramer a couple of days ago. She was all perky how gm is doing great and ev’s are wonderful.
Yep its all clouds and unicorns in her delusional fantasyland.
We need a serious surge in interest rates to put an end to her delusions.
Good luck selling Trucks and SUV’s priced over $75,000 with 7-10% interest rates.
Sad news this extended delay. Took a tour of Fairfax with my brother in 2016 – an excellent facility. Back then it was producing Malibus and Lacrosses.
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