Honda has announced that it will suspend production at several sites in Japan on January 5 and 6, with reduced operations until January 9. While it’s unclear which factories will be affected, some estimates suggest that it will affect the company’s Suzuka and Saitama plants, which primarily produce vehicles for the domestic market. Aside from this, it will close three factories in China from December 29 through January 2. According to Digitimes, the Japanese car manufacturer had to reduce or halt its operations because of the lack of supply of legacy chips, which it sourced from Nexperia.
While Nexperia does not produce cutting-edge semiconductors like TSMC and Samsung, it’s still one of the largest legacy chip manufacturers in the world. Although these may be cheap parts, they’re still essential components found in every vehicle where they’re used in major systems like power steering and automatic windows. The trouble began in mid-October when the Dutch government seized it from Wingtech, its Chinese owner, following concerns of illegal technology transfers from the Netherlands unit to its China-based parent company.
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