The chaos of war and COVID continues to close car factories

Enlarge / A VW employee assembles an ID.3 electric vehicle at the VW factory in Dresden in 2021. (credit: Volkswagen)

Any hopes that the auto industry's supply chain shortages were easing up appear to be comprehensively dashed this week. In Europe, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has caused BMW and Volkswagen to halt production at a number of their factories. And an outbreak of COVID-19 in China has shuttered plants belonging to Toyota, VW, and now Tesla.

VW was one of the first to be affected. In late February, it announced that it was stopping production for four days at its factory in Zwickau, Germany, where the electric ID.4 crossover is built, as well as a three-day halt at another factory in Dresden.

By early March, a leaked internal memo from Porsche revealed that it, too, was affected and that production of all Porsche models would be delayed as a consequence.

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