Semiconductor shortages began to disrupt automotive dynamics in late 2020 and the problem has escalated to such a degree that virtually all manufacturers have exhausted their vehicle inventories. “We are selling what is being produced,” says Guillermo Rosales, deputy general director of the Mexican Association of Automotive Distributors (AMDA). “This is not a problem unique to Mexico, it is a global phenomenon.”
The last quarter of the year used to be the best, in terms of sales, for the sector: between October and December it displaces around 30% of the total volume of a year. But in recent months, several manufacturers, such as General Motors, Nissan and Volkswagen, have had to shut down their plants due to a lack of chip components. This has been reflected in the volume of sales.
The graph already draws a line below the monthly forecasts. AMDA had planned to sell 79,000 units in October and the final result was 3% below. In other years, industry average sales during October, November, and December were over 100,000 units.
“Today the capacity we have as an industry gives us to supply around 80,000 units per month,” says Rodrigo Centeno, marketing director of Nissan Mexicana, the best-selling brand in the country.
There is still no light to indicate that the sector is close to exiting the tunnel. By the middle of the year, distributors predicted that the chip shortage would be exceeded by the first quarter of 2022. Some more optimistic analysts were even talking about the end of this year. But more than one manufacturer already glimpses that the crisis will last throughout 2022.
“We believe that there will continue to be a shortage of semiconductors during 2022,” says Gerardo Macías, sales manager for Suzuki’s car division in Mexico. “It is a fact that this continues. It will surely continue to be a topic for the industry in the coming year ”, adds Maru Escobedo, CEO of BMW Mexico.
So far, new vehicle sales have accumulated 834,486 units and AMDA’s adjusted forecast foresees that 83,500 will be added in November, plus another 89,200 in December, for a grand total of one million at the end of 2021. “We will hardly be able to reach a volume over a million units ”, acknowledges Rosales.
In 2020, the industry sold 949,353 new vehicles. “There is a possibility that this year we will even fall below one million units. We are going to recover the prepandemic sales volume until 2023 ”, adds Macías.