Discovery manufacturing in Slovakian Nitra plant halted.
News just in that Land Rover is the latest auto manufacturer to be hit with technology parts shortage. Yes, the semiconductor shortage has arrived at gates of Jaguar land Rover and they are forced to pause production at their Nitra plant in Slovakia due to the lack of chips.
This in turn will see the global production of the Land Rover Defender and Discovery, both of which are made only at the Nitra plant, grind to a halt. There is no official timeframe given for the reopening of this Slovakian site.
To further add to the bad news, the Nitra site shutdown also comes ahead of news in April this year when the semiconductor shortage forced Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) to temporarily pause the production lines at its Castle Bromwich and Halewood sites in the UK.
This in turn saw the production of the XE, XF and F-Type come to a halt for several weeks, in addition to production of the Discovery Sport and Evoque.
A JLR spokesperson has confirmed that the British automaker is working closely with affected suppliers to minimise the impact on customer orders wherever possible.
Given though that Defender wait times globally were already estimated to be in the region of a year before this recent round of plant production pauses at Nitra, it is likely therefore that eager owners of these Land Rovers will now be waiting even longer still for their new SUVs to arrive. It also does bring into question the Malaysian debut of the eagerly-anticipated Defender, which was originally intended for a local launch sometime in the later of this year.
Looking at the bigger picture meanwhile, this is yet another blow to Jaguar Land Rover’s bottom line, which had already seen its annual sales slump by over 23 percent last year. The British luxury marque however is aiming to turn things around with an ambitious electrification strategy for the future, though there is unfortunately (and rather scarily) a real chance for this semiconductor shortage to still even be plaguing the auto industry then.
Meanwhile, sales of vehicles in the UK has been slowing down by large margins since the start of this pandemic and in May this year, the home of Jaguar Land Rover saw a 674 percent slump in new car registrations and June is looking no better with predictions from the industry experts that July and August will see a resurgence of consumer spending on new cars as the summer months slowly come to and end.
Research and Text by Joshua Chin
