In February, things started to get gloomy with the worldwide shortage of semiconductor chips. Car manufacturers, including everyone from Ford to GM, but not Toyota, had to limit production due to lack of spare parts. At the time, Ford issued a stern warning that it could create a production deficit bad enough to cut its $ 2.5 billion profit, and nothing has changed since then to improve the situation.
Car manufacturers have a bad choice: plow without the right parts or do nothing. Weighing his options, Ford embarked on the first one and began building F-150s and Edge crossovers without some of the components he would normally use. General Motors announced on Monday that it will only go straight and make pickups without a fuel management module, which would reduce fuel consumption by one kilometer per liter. Ford believes the choice will have a less critical effect, saying that the modules are mostly linked to infotainment and the windscreen wipers, but not that the vehicles will go out to customers incompletely.
‘A Motor News According to the report, the models in question are built and then held by Ford until the car manufacturer can get the parts. They will then undergo ‘comprehensive quality checks’ before being allowed to go to dealers, with the missing modules installed to the main building.
It’s not an economical or desirable way to build a truck, especially not one as important to Ford as the F-150, possibly or even arguably the most profitable vehicle of all time. For a company whose reputation and economy are based on the assembly line, it is a way to manufacture cars, but also the only thing he can do if it is going to move chassis, given the situation. Frustratingly, it even means waiting for what Ford calls a “number of weeks” with incomplete trucks.
Ford has also confirmed that it will reduce the Thursday night shift as well as both Friday shifts at its Louisville Assembly Plant, where the Escape crossover and Lincoln Corsair are being built.
Motor News A Ford spokesman said the installation of the missing modules of the F-150s and Edge could be done at outdoor plants to make the factories operate relatively normally. The emphasis on ‘relative’ in light of the huge shortage of something that cars desperately need these days, and which we have been keeping for consumer electronics for the past year. Expect this problem, like the unfinished trucks, to be nowhere for a while.
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