Chrysler Pacifica, Voyager Production Idled 4 Weeks Amid Microchip Shortage
Amid an ongoing shortage of microchips affecting the auto industry, Stellantis will idle production at a plant that builds the Chrysler Pacifica and Voyager minivans for the U.S. market. The facility, Windsor Assembly Plant in Windsor, Ontario, is just across the Detroit River from Detroit.
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The Windsor Star reported the news, citing information from Unifor Local 444, one of three unions that operates at the plant. The union announced Thursday on Facebook that it’s “received word that the shortage of microchips crippling almost every auto company is now impacting us here at the Windsor Assembly Plant.” The four-week shutdown begins Monday, Unifor said.
Asked for comment, Stellantis said in a statement that it “continues to work closely with our suppliers to mitigate the manufacturing impacts caused by the various supply chain issues facing our industry” and confirmed the Windsor Assembly Plant will be down through mid-April.
The shutdown comes only a few weeks after a separate, chip-related three-week shutdown ended, the Star notes. (The microchip shortage is often interchangeably called a semiconductor shortage, a related term.) Stellantis’ latest shutdown, which the newspaper said will run until April 26, is the latest in a string of production delays related to a global microchip shortage that’s hitting the auto industry. Ford announced on March 18 that it would build F-150 pickup trucks and Edge SUVs without certain parts and hold them for weeks before shipping to dealers once the parts arrived. Reuters reported Thursday that the automaker would idle F-150 production entirely for three days due to the shortage.
In total, dozens of models from at least eight automakers are known to have been affected by the microchip shortage, which stems from surging demand amid the COVID-19 pandemic for chip-heavy consumer electronics. Cars, unsurprisingly, use quite a few of them.
As of today, Chrysler dealers have some 6,000 Voyager and Pacifica minivans, including the Pacifica Hybrid, listed on Cars.com. By contrast, Honda and Toyota dealers have roughly 10,000 Odyssey and 4,400 Sienna minivans, respectively.
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