The shortage of microchips is driving manufacturers crazy. While some Germans trust that the crisis will be solved in 2022, others already point to 2024. A situation that is leading to delays in planned deliveries of up to a year. Porsche’s solution goes through the installation of fake chips.
The semiconductor crisis, the microchips, is causing real havoc. Mercedes sources pointed to a normalization of the situation throughout 2022, but other Volkswagen voices are already talking about the regularization at the end of 2023 or early 2024. The fact is that the provisions are being allocating to models with a higher commercial margin, delaying the production of other most recent.
This also supposes extend delivery times, since manufacturers have long opted to manufacture on demand, and not keep units in stock given the difficulty in selling them, since do not conform to customer settings. At Land Rover, the situation is alarming, giving delivery dates of up to a year. This is precisely what you want to avoid Porsche. You prefer to meet customers in some way, because otherwise you will generate huge losses.
Porsche finds a temporary solution to the microchip crisis
The sports brand has gone off on a tangent, according to a German newspaper, the “Stuttgarter Zeitung”, announcing the installation of fake, temporary chips to get out of the way that will force the firm to a global recall to install the authentic ones. The German manufacturer produces these microchips that work as a placeholder, and then replace them with the final ones once they are available and are received at the dealerships.
Oliver Blume, manager of Porsche, has pointed out that customers can rest easy because these chips only will be used in non-essential functions of your models, which do not affect the true operation habitual. Declarations in which you have not specified which specific systems are involved, but which do not compromise safety on board. Presumably Porsche has carried out the relevant tests to validate this strategy.
Blume has pointed out that there is no other way to solve the issue, so that customers would not receive their models in the long term, impossible to specify a date. Porsche, like other manufacturers that have provisions, will allocate the available microchips to the models that they leave more benefits, and those that generate lower CO2 emissions in order to comply with the emission limits.