World-renowned car manufacturer Toyota is facing a shortage of semiconductor chips in the manufacturing of its vehicles and it has announced that it is going to replace one of its two electronic “smart” keys with that of mechanical keys in Japan. The company reported this on Thursday and addressed the concerns regarding the situation. Toyota Motor Corp. also made an apology to its customers for any inconvenience caused regarding the replacement of the car keys from electronic to mechanical ones. Hence, it seems that the company is shifting back to the basic car keys for the time being until it resolves its supply chain issues.
Coupled with this, it should be noted that Toyota Motor Corp. has been facing a lot of disruptions, particularly this year. First, it came in the form of a global pandemic that hampered the supply of various technological equipment across the world. Secondly, natural disasters played their role as well and posed additional challenges for the company to cope with. In addition, now the global shortage of semiconductor chips has worsened the scenario even more as it consequently led to the delay in the production of cars as well as in carrying out shipments. A lot of customers are also facing issues due to this situation as they complain that their orders are getting late than ever before.
However, the recent statement regarding the prevailing situation which was issued by the company, stated, “As the shortage of semiconductors continues, this is a provisional measure aimed at delivering cars to customers as quickly as possible. As for the second smart key, we plan to hand it over as soon as it is ready.” This depicts that the situation is really worrisome at Toyota, but the company is making efforts to get out of these supply chain issues and handle the orders as effectively as it can.
To that end, it was also reported by the manufacturer of Toyota and Lexus models that the goal of completing the manufacturing of 9.7 million vehicles this year, which was anticipated before, doesn’t seem to be met due to the current situation. Hence, this implies that the company will also fall short of its projected vehicles this year, which would consequently result in a decrease in unit sales.
