Against the shortage: Hyundai is planning to develop its own chips

The automotive industry was hit hard by the chip shortages during the corona pandemic. Now, with Hyundai, the next automaker is planning to produce its own chips.

When car sales fell during the corona pandemic, the production lines of many manufacturers also came to a standstill in many places. It was around this time that laptop and game console manufacturers began ramping up production to meet the increased demand caused by the lockdown. In doing so, they bought up the existing range of chips that the automotive industry could not use at the time.

However, at the time when consumers decided to buy cars again and production was running at normal speed again, there was a sudden shortage of semiconductors worldwide, which in turn led to renewed partial shutdowns of entire production chains. Due to the plans of many manufacturers in the direction of electromobility, the need for chips was greater than ever before.

Hyundai Motor has now announced plans to develop its own semiconductor chips . Above all, the company wants to reduce its dependence on chip manufacturers. In addition to Hyundai, Tesla and General Motors have already announced that they will follow a similar path and produce their own chips in order to be able to act more independently.

The South Korean automaker even had to temporarily close some factories this year due to the lack of chips – and of course that shouldn’t happen again. According to Techcrunch, COO José Munoz said that Hyundai had to become more independent in this area. He acknowledged that developing chips in-house would take a lot of time and investment, but that area would be worked on. Even without its own chips, Hyundai Motor is still well on the way to launching electric vehicles in the US next year. There are also plans to expand a factory in Alabama and increase production capacity, according to Munoz.