Ola Kallenius, CEO of Daimler Group and Global President of Mercedes Benz Automotive Group, warned at a press conference before the Munich Auto Show on Sunday that the global semiconductor shortage may not completely disappear next year and may not be resolved until 2023.
Several chip suppliers have mentioned structural demand issues, "Kalenius said." This may continue until 2022, and there may be some relief by 2023
Daimler Group recently lowered its annual sales forecast for its automotive division, expecting delivery volumes to remain roughly the same as in 2020, rather than significantly increasing.
Due to insufficient chip supply, car manufacturers such as General Motors in the United States, Mahindra in India, and Toyota in Japan have lowered their production and sales expectations, while major semiconductor production centers in Asia have slowly recovered from the impact of the pandemic.
This quarter, due to epidemic prevention and control measures, a considerable number of factories in Malaysia have temporarily closed. Malaysia has become one of the world's major chip testing and packaging centers in recent years, with Infineon, NXP Semiconductors, and STMicroelectronics all operating factories in the country, further increasing Daimler's semiconductor supply pressure.
Kalenius said on Sunday that the tight supply and demand situation of chips is expected to ease in the fourth quarter of this year, but he expects "structural" demand issues to affect the industry in 2022. The Japanese chip manufacturer that supplies Toyota also predicted last month that the chip supply shortage problem may continue until next year.
Accelerate electrification
It is reported that Mercedes Benz will showcase several fully electric vehicles at the Munich Auto Show.
This includes the EQE, Mercedes AMG's first pure electric luxury sedan, and a concept car showcasing Mercedes Maybach's entry into the era of electric vehicles. The company will also launch a fully electric SUV EQB to the European market.
In July of this year, Daimler announced that it would invest over 40 billion euros (47.5 billion US dollars) by 2030 to compete with Tesla in the all electric vehicle market, but warned that this technological shift would lead to some layoffs.
This German automaker has announced that it will build 8 battery factories to increase the production of electric vehicles (EVs). Starting from 2025, all newly released vehicle architectures will be on a pure electric platform, and each model will offer customers an optional pure electric version.
Kalenius also stated on Sunday that the company's plan to spin off its trucking company Daimler Trucks by the end of 2021 is still ongoing.
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