Jaguar Land Rover will temporarily stop production at its Halewood and Castle Bromwich plants, reports The Guardian. The hold on car production is expected to last a week, as executives assess the ongoing difficulties associated with obtaining chips.
The news is not unexpected, as virtually all manufacturers have announced some level of disruption to automotive production. The chip shortage is another impact of the ongoing pandemic, with the supply of PCs, gaming consoles, phones, and other electronic devices all being hard hit.
Read: Daimler Puts 18,500 Employees On Short-Time Work
The shortage in semiconductors results from increased demand for tech products as consumers across the globe continue to stay at home. These trends have seen increased purchases of computer equipment necessary for work-from-home applications, as well as added demand for the latest gaming consoles (such as Sony’s PlayStation 5) and hardware.
Not only has the semiconductor shortage disrupted production, but it has even affected how some cars are designed and produced, as Peugeot announced that it is going to stop installing digital instrument clusters in the 308, instead using an analog one.
The shutdown will affect models from both Jaguar and Land Rover, with the XE, XF, and F-Type all produced at Jaguar’s Castle Bromwich plant. Along with this, both the Land Rover Discovery Sport and Range Rover Evoque, which are built at the Halewood factory, will be disrupted too.
See: Peugeot Ditsches 308’s Digital Instrument Cluster For Analog Due To Chip Shortages
The paper reports that production will continue as usual at Land Rover’s Solihull plant, while the company’s other plants in Slovakia, Brazil, and China will so far continue unaffected.
“Like other automotive manufacturers, we are currently experiencing some Covid-19 supply chain disruption,” said a JLR spokesperson reported by The Guardian. “That including the global availability of semiconductors, which is having an impact on our production schedules and our ability to meet global demand for some of our vehicles. We are working closely with affected suppliers to resolve the issues and minimize the impact on customer orders wherever possible.”
