GM Will Idle Most Plants in North America

Some GM trucks are being partially built and stored, and some just aren’t getting built at all. The chip shortage that has been affecting electronics of all sorts since the beginning of the year is affecting auto production again, with GM announcing that it will idle almost all of its North American plants. Factories in Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Michigan, Canada, and Mexico will shut down for a week or more, pausing production on several makes and models, the Detroit Free Press reports. The shutdowns begin Monday. Ford is seeing a slowdown, too, cutting shifts or stopping production at several plants, per the AP.

"During the downtime, we will repair and ship unfinished vehicles from many impacted plants ... to dealers to help meet the strong customer demand for our products," said a GM spokesperson. Some of the continued slowdown also is due to the delta variant surging in southeast Asia and affecting the workforce there. GM, like other automakers, is keeping mum when asked to forecast what the chip shortage and production slowdowns will do to its bottom line. Ford, meanwhile, reported that sales of new vehicles fell by 33% in August thanks in part to the chip shortage, reports CNBC. (More semiconductor chip stories.)