Car Makers Delete Infotainment Features Due to Shortages

share on:
Car Makers Delete Infotainment Features Chip Shortage

As chip shortages drag on, car makers are taking to removing features including navigation and camera-based rear view mirrors.

Nissan is deleting navigation from thousands of vehicles, and Ram quit offering its camera-based mirror as standard on its 1500 pickups, reports Automotive News.  Also, Renault stopped offering an oversized digital screen behind the steering wheel on its Arkana crossover.

Nissan is reportedly cutting navigation-supplied vehicles by a third.

This follows Ford’s announcement in March  that it will build F150 trucks and Edge SUVs without some infotainment features due to semiconductor shortages. In Ford’s case, it builds the vehicles and then holds them for “a number of weeks,” until it can get the proper modules, before shipping the cars to dealerships.

Also in March, General Motors announced that it was building some of its 2021 trucks without a fuel management module due to chip shortages.  It is not holding the trucks but releasing them to dealers without the module, which will lower the fuel economy of those vehicles by one mile per gallon.

Automotive news reported NXP Semiconductor CEO Kurt Sievers said a factor adding to the chip shortage is that the industry is shifting to electric vehicles (EVs) faster than anticipated. The publication said car makers are also starting to allocate scarce components to more profitable and better selling models at the peril of other models.

Source: Automotive News

Want to receive industry news? Sign up here
share on: