The proportion of electric cars is expected to grow massively in the coming years. A new study warns that this will significantly increase the demand for semiconductors.

Bad news for the automotive industry: According to the management consultancy AlixPartners, the shortage of semiconductors that broke out with the corona pandemic in 2020 will continue to slow down production in 2024. So far, car manufacturers and major suppliers have assumed that the massive supply problems will ease over the course of this year and disappear in 2023.

“Unlike many other market observers, we assume that the chip shortage will still exist in 2024,” AlixPartners consultant Fabian Piontek told Reuters news agency about a study published on Tuesday.

“Anyone who expects an earlier relaxation in the coming year will overlook the fact that the demand for chips per vehicle will increase.” Electric cars, whose production will increase significantly in the next few years, would need about ten times as many chips as combustion models. In addition, the semiconductor producers are not investing in an expansion of the production of so-called analog chips, which the automotive industry urgently needs, but rather in microcontrollers (MCU) in accordance with the high demand from other sectors.