China Lockdown Has Indian Automakers In A Fix

With Beijing now set to test all its citizens for Covid infections, China has gone into a complete lockdown of sorts where ships are stranded and supplies to India's auto industry badly impacted.

- Murali Gopalan

For Indian carmakers which are going the extra mile in electric, the lockdown in China has completely thrown supplies out of gear which means they can only wait and watch.

China's massive lockdown following the Covid outbreak has wreaked havoc across the global automotive supply chain with Indian companies facing the heat especially for their electric vehicle needs.

First it was the war in Ukraine that disrupted supplies and now it is the pandemic in China that has completely thrown things out of gear. Just when we thought that the worst was over following two difficult years of the pandemic, this has ended up being a double whammy for India, a top automotive industry CEO told Autocar Professional.

In a way, the problem in China is way more acute because it is, for all practical purposes, the global epicentre for the auto industry's EV (and non-EV) requirements. Parts made there are shipped to regions across the world and everything has now come to a screeching halt following the lockdown.

It is a complete nightmare and if this continues, we can pretty much write off 2022 for India's auto industry, especially cars and two-wheelers, continued the CEO. Shanghai is only one part of the story and continues to make headlines owing to its stature as the glitzy commercial capital of China.

However, the bigger problem lies in regions like Suzhou which are huge manufacturing hubs and are locked down due to the Covid situation. There are a whole lot of other such hubs which make automotive components to meet the needs of countries across the world.

There are huge numbers of ships that are queuing up to offload consignments and also pick up goods from Chinese ports to be delivered worldwide. They have all been stuck for many days now because of the lockdown with port operations having come to a near standstill.