Germany to boost European chip manufacturing in the wake of auto IC shortages

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier has sent a letter to Taiwan’s Minister for Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua asking her to help solve the chip shortage being suffered by the German car makers.

“I would be pleased if you could take on this matter and underline the importance of additional semiconductor capacities for the German automotive industry to TSMC,” wrote Altmaier.

TSMC responded with a statement this morning saying: “We are working with customers closely and moving some of their mature nodes to more advanced nodes, where we have better capacity to support them.”

The German move comes after the US car lobby group the American Automotive Policy Council – which lobbies for General Motors, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler and is led by the former Governor of Missouri Matt Blunt, asked the Biden administration to put pressure on the Asian foundries to switch their production lines to auto ICs.

A spokeswoman for Germany’s economy ministry said that the German federal government is looking at ways to reduce dependency on Asian chip suppliers to avoid similar problems in the future.

The German government is, said the spokeswoman, looking at increasing state support for ramping up semiconductor manufacturing capacity in Europe.