TAIPEI (Reuters) – Germany has asked Taiwan to persuade Taiwanese manufacturers to alleviate a shortage of semiconductor chips in the automotive sector, hampering the new economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Car manufacturers around the world are closing assembly lines due to problems in the delivery of semiconductors, which in some cases have been exacerbated by the former Trump administration’s action against major Chinese chip factories.
The shortfall affected Volkswagen VOWG_p.DE, Ford Motor Co. FN, Subaru Corp 7270.T, Toyota Motor Corp 7203.T, Nissan Motor Co. Ltd 7201.T, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and other car manufacturers.
In a letter seen by Reuters on Sunday, German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier asked his Taiwanese counterpart Wang Mei-hua to address the issue in talks with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) 2330. TW, the world’s largest contract disc maker and one of Germany’s main suppliers.
“I would be pleased if you could take up this matter and underline the importance of extra semiconductor capability for the German automotive industry for TSMC,” Altmaier wrote.
Altmaier said the goal was to enable additional capacities and deliveries of semiconductors in the short and medium term.
The German car industry was already in direct talks with TSMC about deliveries of hikes, and there were ‘very constructive’ signals from TSMC to solve the problem, he wrote.
A spokesman for the German economy said he was monitoring the situation closely and that it was in talks with the car industry.
DIGITAL SOVEREIGN
To reduce dependence on Asian suppliers and avoid similar problems in the future, Berlin now plans to increase state support to increase the production capacity of semiconductors in Germany and Europe, the spokesman added.
The Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs said it had received requests through diplomatic channels to facilitate a shortage of chips for the automotive sector, although he was not aware of Altmaier’s letter.
He said he had begun talks with domestic chip suppliers in response to requests from other countries and asked them to “provide full assistance”.
“The supply and demand situation in question is also closely linked to the plans of car factories to reduce inventory during the off-season,” the ministry said.
TSMC said in a statement that the issue of disk shortages for car companies is very important to them.
“This is our top priority, and TSMC is working closely with our automotive customers to resolve capacity support issues,” he said.
Reporting by Michael Nienaber in BERLIN and Jeanny Kao and Ben Blanchard in TAIPEI; Save