Volvo Cars and Volkswagen have warned that there may be temporary plant shutdowns in Europe as a result of supply chain disruptions caused by a battle between China and the Netherlands over control of chipmaker Nexperia, reports the Financial Times. Nexperia also notified Japanese auto parts manufacturers that it may not be able to guarantee supply as car executives urged for a diplomatic solution to fend off a bigger hit to the global industry.
“We are aware that this situation could have a serious impact on the global production of our members,” the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said. “We hope that each country involved will reach a prompt and realistic solution.”
Volvo Cars chief executive Håkan Samuelsson said the Swedish group, which is owned by China’s Geely, was not seeing any immediate problems and was applying lessons learned from chip shortages in the pandemic to communicate with its suppliers.