Employees work on the assembly lines at Toyotas manufacturing plant in San Antonio, Texas. Severe weather, port blockages and microchip shortages are wreaking havoc on U.S. auto production as Toyota and other manufacturers face disruptions.
Severe weather, port blockages and microchip shortages are wreaking havoc on U.S. auto production with Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. Ltd. now facing disruptions.
The Japanese automakers recently announced they are halting production at plants in North America because of limits in needed supplies, including petrochemicals used in plastic and electronic components and semiconductors. They join other automakers such as General Motors that also have had to shut down plants because of the global shortage of microchips used for driver-assist features to heated seats as well as in consumer electronics.
The challenges, especially with semiconductors, highlight the need for strategic alignments for certain parts that require large amounts of scale and investment. That includes batteries needed for forthcoming electric vehicles.
The scale of production is huge, the investment is huge, and the alignment is strategic, Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labor and economics at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said of both semiconductors and vehicle batteries. Disruptions that happen there are going to be difficult to deal with. They do not flow as smoothly as other parts in the industry. Its sticky and chunky.
Toyotas disruptions arent related to semiconductors but to a shortage of petrochemicals resulting from extreme winter weather in Texas and Mexico in early March. It affects production of Camry and Avalon sedans and the hybrid RAV4 SUV in Kentucky, engines in West Virginia and Tacoma pickups in Mexico. It is unclear how long the disruption will last, but the automaker does not expect to furlough any employees.
Thats also the case for North American employees at Honda even though the company says all of its auto plants in the U.S. and Canada are being affected in some way. Production at most plants has been halted, though the situation remains fluid.
We continue to manage a number of supply chain issues related to the impact from COVID-19, congestion at various ports, the microchip shortage and severe winter weather over the past several weeks, Honda said in a statement.
Pandemic-induced restrictions at West Coast ports have become overwhelmed after the implementation of COVID-19 restrictions. Vancouver, Washington, had a record-breaking 2020 with revenues totaling $50 million, a 15% increase over 2019. February imports rose 26% year-over-year in Oakland, California, and 53% in Los Angeles.
One year ago, global trade slowed to a crawl as the Covid-19 pandemic first hit China and then spread worldwide, Gene Seroka, port of Los Angeles executive director, said in a statement. Today, we are in the seventh month of an unparalleled import surge, driven by unprecedented demands by American consumers.
Semiconductor manufacturers, meanwhile, last year had pivoted from producing microchips for automakers, who shut down North American production for weeks, to consumer electronics that experienced increasing demand as more people worked from home and students went to school online.
It takes three to six months to reallocate, Dziczek said. Its going to take several months to get that capacity needed after the automakers came back and consumer demand was strong.
Because of semiconductor shortages, production stopped in March at GMs Lansing Grand River plant making the Chevrolet Camaro and Cadillac CT4 and CT5. It will be down at least through mid-April.
GMs San Luis Potosi plant in Mexico, where the Chevrolet Equinox and Trax and GMC Terrain SUVs are built, also had been shut down but was expected to open back up to two production shifts this week.
Other plants facing extended downtime are in Kansas, where the Cadillac XT4 SUV and Chevrolet Malibu are made, and in Ontario, where the Equinox is built. Both have been down since Feb. 8. A plant in Brazil also is facing downtown in April and May. Last month, GM said the shortage could hurt 2021 earnings by $1.5 to $2 billion.
Subaru Corp. said it has cut back on overtime work and holiday shifts at its Indiana factory. U.S. plants operated by Ford Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. and Volkswagen AG are operating. Stellantis NV did not specify if any plants remain down.
There often are strategic partnerships between automakers and manufacturers producing specialized microchips for their vehicles. Last year, for example, Daimler AGs Mercedes-Benz announced a partnership to use software developed by microchip maker NVIDIA Corp. for automated driving functions.
That makes it difficult for automakers to trade out vendorssimilar to the differences between Apple Inc.s iPhone operating system and that of an Android mobile device, said Sam Abuelsamid, principal e-mobility analyst at Guidehouse Insights.
You cant directly run the software on one chip on the other chip, Abuelsamid said. To replace that, it requires a lot of the software that has to run on it to make it work. It can be done, but it takes a long time.
And its expensive: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. last year announced a $12 billion factory in Arizonaroughly six times the costs for a new automotive assembly plant, Dziczek said.
Likewise, vehicle batteries are specialized, coming in different shapes and designs. Volkswagen recently announced it was switching to a unified prismatic battery for future electric vehicles. The decision led to a $14 billion order from Swedish battery maker Northvolt and moved it away from the pouch-style batteries made by LG Chem Ltd. and SK Innovation Co.
Honda has created an alliance to use GMs Ultium battery technology it will manufacture with LG Chem. A $2.3 billion battery plant in northeast Ohio will have 30-gigawatt hours of capacity. Depending on the size of the vehicle, that may translate to 300,000 to 400,000 units.
VWs plans are even larger for plants with 40 gigawatt hours of capacity.
Batteries are specialized, not interchangeable and theres these strategic tie-ups and supplier relationships, while there arent very many independent battery plants, Dzcizek said. You have these big blocks coming online. That makes it stickier between companies. The case is the same with semiconductors.
Macro shot microchip isolated on white background. Computer hardware technology. Integrated communication processor isolated over white. Information engineering. Semiconductor. PCB. Closeup
Remember those images of empty streets, minus people and cars, from the early days of lockdown last year?
Those memorable photos, captured as the coronavirus pandemic was upending daily life, meant a drop, at least for a time, in the amount of vehicle miles being driven. Unfortunately, that didnt translate into a drop in pedestrian deaths.
Instead, a preliminary data analysis recently released by the Governors Highway Safety Association shows a shocking 20% increase in the pedestrian fatality rate per billion vehicle miles traveled during the first six months of the year.
Its upsetting. Its really very, very unsettling to think we can have such a large reduction in traffic and no drop in pedestrian fatalities, said Richard Retting, director of safety/research for Sam Schwartz, the consulting firm that analyzed the information. Theres never been anything close to this on a rate basis.
Pedestrian deaths have skyrocketed in the past decade despite substantial safety improvements for vehicle occupants. A variety of factors are believed to be at play in the increase in pedestrian fatalities, including more large trucks and SUVs on the road as recounted by the Detroit Free Press/USA Today investigation, Death on foot: Americas love of SUVs is killing pedestrians, as well as distraction, vehicle speed and alcohol use.
Other issues also are noteworthy. People of color represent a disproportionate number of victims, and most fatal pedestrian crashes happen at night and away from intersections.
Despite the impact of COVID-19 on daily life, including a shift to remote learning and working from home, the number of fatalities in the first half of 2020 appears to have been close to the same as the prior year, with 2,957 pedestrian deaths for the first six months of 2020 compared with 2,951 in 2019, according to safety association projections.
The key figure, however, in the context of the pandemic is how that relates to the number of vehicle miles traveled, which dropped 16.5% compared with the same period in 2019. The pedestrian fatality rate of 2.2 per billion vehicle miles traveled represents a 20% increase over the 2019 rate, according to the analysis of data from state highway safety offices.
Such an increase, if it holds for the full year or does not drop much, would be troublingly notable. Fatalities tend to go up in the second half of the year, Retting noted, saying people tend to be out and about more during the warmer summer months and for holidays such as Halloween and Christmas.
The analysis found that 6,301 pedestrians died in the United States in 2019. That number is an increase of about 96 over the federal data released so far for the year, but was adjusted to account for historical underreporting in the governments typical initial releases, according to the safety association.
Pedestrians accounted for about 17% of all traffic deaths in 2019, a percentage that has risen fairly consistently over the last decade. The tens of thousands of pedestrians killed in the last 10 years include men, women and children, and it highlights the dramatic toll this crisis has taken on Americas most vulnerable road users.
However, the numbers, all based on preliminary data, point to some improvements as well.
Twenty states and Washington, D.C., recorded declines in the number of pedestrian fatalities, some of which were double digit and percentage declines, compared with the first half of 2019. Delaware and Kentucky are projected to have three years of declines in pedestrian deaths, while Arizona is expected to have its second year of declining fatalities.
Still, 27 states reported increases in their numbers during the same period. Michigan, with 68 fatalities, had three more pedestrian deaths in the first half of 2020 than in the same stretch of 2019, according to the analysis.
Pedestrian Crossing Warning Road Sign on white background
