(FreedomBeacon.com)- Last Friday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that, thanks to new semiconductor plants that are either currently under construction or in the planning stages, the current global chip shortage that has severely crippled the automobile industry throughout the year should be turning around.
At Italian Tech Week, Musk appeared at a joint session with Stellantis and Ferrari CEO John Elkann. Asked how long he thought the current global chip shortage would affect vehicle production, Musk said that he thinks it will only be short term.
“There’s a lot of chip fabrication plants that are being built,” Musk explained, adding that he thinks the industry will have “good capacity” for providing the chips necessary by next year.
Both Musk and Elkann agreed on potential support coming from nuclear power to cover for increasing global energy needs. Musk voiced surprise over the countries who recently began moving away from nuclear energy, which, he added, “is safe.”
The shortage of semiconductors has hit the auto industry particularly hard over the last several months. On September 30, three automakers announced new temporary closures of manufacturing sites in Germany, citing the global chip shortage for the reason.
Germany has been hit severely by supply problems this year, with Volkswagen, Ford, BMW, and Daimler factories all facing start-stop production.
Opel, which is owned by Stellantis, has shut down manufacturing until 2022. According to a Stellantis spokesman, the Eisenach factory in central Germany will stop production starting next week and plans to restart again at the beginning of next year – “to the extent the supply chain situation allows.”
Volkswagen also announced a nearly two-week stoppage at its flagship plant in Wolfsburg starting next week. It had already curbed production at the Wolfsburg plant in August.
Likewise, Ford Motor Company announced that it would push back the scheduled restart of production at its Cologne, Germany plant from October 1 to the end of October instead.
But the chip shortage isn’t just affecting Germany. General Motors closed assembly lines in the United States, as has Japanese giant Toyota, which, in September, delayed plans to restart at its plant in Valenciennes, in France.
