What’s the issue with semiconductors?

As with most things that contain electronics, cars contain little chips called semiconductors. They’re vital in making the sat nav, tyre pressure sensors, parking sensors, heads up display and even the electric seats in your car work. Every car needs hundreds of chips.

There’s more demand for chips than ever before and they’re less of them around, in part because of the factories not being open during lockdown but also down to a bit of bad luck too – a fire at a plant in Japan and a particularly bad winter in Texas for example. The BBC has lots more info here.

How is this affecting cars?

Manufacturers can’t get the chips they need to build cars, so lead times are much longer than we would normally expect. Lead times are also uncertain as in some cases, the chips aren’t arriving when manufacturers were expecting them.

How could this affect me?

It could mean that the delivery time for a car changes after you’ve placed your order. We’re working really closely with all manufacturers on this, so we’ll let you know as soon as possible if your delivery time does change for any reason. If the delivery time changes and you need to cancel your order, there won’t be any charges.