BMW Facing New Chip Shortage Problems

The crisis in the global chip market is creating new problems for the BMW car group. Now the company has to stop production in Regensburg as well. Fortunately, the already planned summer break is coming soon.

As of today, the production lines have come to a halt. “We’re not producing next week,” a BMW spokeswoman confirmed to the automobile week shortly before the weekend. In the short term, the summer break, which was planned anyway, was extended to two weeks. It was already fixed in the calendar that BMW closes the first week of August in Regensburg. Production should then be resumed on August 9th.

The group confirmed that the additional time-out was caused by missing components. At the top of the list are various chips that are urgently needed for the extensive electronics in vehicles. These are either not available at all or only at purchase prices that confuse the entire calculation of the products.

Perpetual Effect

The production losses continue. Most recently, BMW had to close the plant in Leipzig. In the past week, something has only been done here on one out of five working days. This location is also going into a short summer break next week and it is hoped that this can ultimately alleviate the situation a little.

Various other factories in the group have also had to shut down production at times. The same is true for other car manufacturers and also for many producers in other industries. So far it is completely unclear how long the serious bottlenecks in the chip industry will continue. The hope that it will be much better this year is there, but probably unrealistic. Industry experts tend to assume that normalization is unlikely before 2023.