REUTERS/John F. Martin
- General Motors said Thursday that it is cutting production in eight plants across North America.
- The company is adding downtime for plants across the continent for approximately two weeks.
- The global chip shortage has been plaguing the automotive industry for months.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
General Motors is cutting production in plants across North America due to the semiconductor shortage that has been plaguing the automotive industry for months.
As the chip shortage continues, General Motors said in a press release Thursday that it will be adding downtime at eight of its plants across Mexico, the US, and Canada for an average of two weeks, but all plants are scheduled to resume production by the end of September.
"These most recent scheduling adjustments are being driven by the continued parts shortages caused by semiconductor supply constraints from international markets experiencing COVID 19-related restrictions," the company said in a statement. "During the downtime, we will repair and ship unfinished vehicles from many impacted plants, including Fort Wayne and Silao, to dealers to help meet the strong customer demand for our products."
GM added: "Although the situation remains complex and very fluid, we remain confident in our team's ability to continue finding creative solutions to minimize the impact on our highest-demand and capacity-constrained vehicles."
The global chip shortage isn't expected to get better for another two years, and for the automotive industry, supplies are limited.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk compared the chip shortage to people panic buying toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic. "Never seen anything like it," Musk tweeted. "Fear of running out is causing every company to overorder - like the toilet paper shortage, but at epic scale."