Mitsubishi confirms diesel, Bluetooth supply issues

Add about a month to the anticipated delivery time of your new Mitsubishi Challenger or Triton 4x4, says Mitsubishi's VP of Corporate Strategy, Paul Stevenson.

Diesel-engined Mitsubishis are in short supply at the moment, he told the Carsales Network last week. According to Stevenson, production of diesel Mitsubishis is currently hampered by the inability of parts supplier Renesas to provide the processors necessary for diesel engine management systems. Renesas was one of the companies smashed by the earthquake and the tsunami that struck northern Japan in March.

The Mitsubishi exec says that Mitsubishi's plants are located in the south of the country and weren't directly affected by the event. Even the company's tier one suppliers were largely unaffected — but some of those suppliers have been unable to contact or liaise with tier two or three suppliers based in the north.

"We heard one horror story of one particular plant... the tsunami hit just at shift changeover, so it just wiped out everyone," Stevenson said.

"Renesas is the classic [example], with the ECU chips for diesels. 70 per cent of the Japanese industry... [was] stuffed. 'That means no diesel cars for six months' was the reaction..."

Since the output from Renesas is critical to vehicle production in Japan, it has been receiving considerable help to get back on its feet. Reports that major players in the automotive industry have sent 1000 staff to northern Japan to rebuild Renesas are not correct, says Stevenson... it's more like 2000.

"This is a huge industry up there; there's 2000 people from the whole automotive industry at present that I gather have been moved into Renesas, to try to get them cranked up..."

Stevenson also says that the country is still blighted by rolling power shortages; not helping the production of electronic systems.

"For electronics... their production lines take a week to get into place — and then they run them 24 hours a day. If you chop electricity for three hours a day... they can never get started."

Every diesel-engined vehicle in the local Mitsubishi range — Challenger, Triton, Pajero... etc — has been affected by the constrained supply, but Stevenson explains that the problem is gradually dissipating.

"It's really not going to be an issue. We're currently only looking at a three to four-week delay for the next month or so."

Bluetooth is a similar issue, albeit to a lesser extent. Once again, the supply of a chip has brought the production process undone, but Bluetooth's impact on sales and deliveries in Australia is lower than is the case with the engine management CPUs.

"Fortunately with Bluetooth it's largely an option," Stevenson explains. "Again, it's only a month or so that you have that sort of shortage [anyway]."

It's still too early to look beyond the immediate implications, but — as for many in the industry — Stevenson believes there must be some soul-searching to avoid single-point sensitivity playing such a devastating role in future.

"It's thrown into question the whole [issue] of supply chain logistics..." he said. Having one plant supply one type of part for the whole world provides "economies of scale", but "there's a huge risk associated with that."

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