“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,” a company spokesperson said.
As a result, factories from Ohio to Ontario are expected to go dark for stretches next week, and “in some way, all of our auto plants in the US and Canada will be impacted,” the representative said.
“In 2021, we will suffer from it,” Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess told CNN’s Julia Chatterley in an interview Tuesday. “Not over the entire [vehicle] lineup, but some models might be constrained.”
Diess estimated that the automaker had “probably lost already 100,000 cars this year, which will be very difficult to recover in the second half.”
Diess doesn’t see the problem easing up anytime soon, either.
“We see more constraints coming, because of the difficult climate conditions in America, where we had two, three semiconductor plants off [the] grid for more than … a week or so,” he said.
The company also recently suffered some disruption due to an earthquake in Japan, according to the chief executive.
“It’s really a combination of factors which constrain semiconductor supply,” he told CNN Business. “We hope to overcome this situation.”
— CNN’s Yoonjung Seo and Hanna Ziady contributed to this report.