BERLIN – Volkswagen Group’s main plant in Wolfsburg is building well under 400,000 cars a year, less than half its capacity, because of “flat-out chaos” in the supply chain, VW brand chief Thomas Schaefer said.
Speaking in a live interview with local newspapers in Wolfsburg on Tuesday, Schaefer said suppliers were cancelling deliveries with one night’s notice, and chips were selling with up to an 800 percent price surcharge.
“It’s a catastrophe for the business,” Schaefer said. “These are absurd sums,” he added, speaking of chip prices on the open market.
In October, VW purchasing boss Murat Askel said the automaker is entering into direct purchase agreements to tackle supply chain shortages.
VW is experiencing a shift in power from a buyer’s market to one where its was increasingly a smaller and less powerful customer for suppliers in newly important areas like software, Aksel said at the conference of Automobilwoche, a sister publication of Automotive News Europe.