The semiconductor crunch that has battered the auto sector leaves carmakers with a stark choice: pay up, stock up or risk getting stuck on the sidelines as chipmakers focus on more lucrative business elsewhere.

Car manufacturers including Volkswagen, Ford and General Motors have cut output as the chip market was swept clean by makers of consumer electronics such as smartphones - the chip industry’s preferred customers because they buy more advanced, higher-margin chips.

Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp overtook Germany’s Volkswagen in vehicle sales last year, regaining pole position as the world’s top selling automaker for the first time in five years as the pandemic demand slump hit its German rival harder.

Toyota said on Thursday its group-wide global sales fell 11.3% to 9.528 million vehicles in 2020. That compared with a 15.2 percent drop at Volkswagen to 9.305 million vehicles.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seeking to use the announcement to elevate the United Kingdom’s environmental credentials after he sacked the head of a Glasgow U.N. Climate Change Conference planned for November known as COP26.

Johnson will launch COP26, a two-week conference seen as a moment of truth for the 2015 Paris Agreement to combat global warming, at an event alongside Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough.

APRNEWS - German car behemoth Volkswagen on Thursday reported a slip in profits in the first quarter, in part blaming a billion-euro ($1.1-billion) charge over "legal risks" related to its "dieselgate" emissions cheating scandal.

APRNEWS - African firms are hoping for a slice of the continent’s largely underdeveloped market for new cars, taking on global car giants like Japan’s Toyota and Germany’s Volkswagen.

APRNEWS - Volkswagen will manufacture electric car batteries and charging stations in its home region in Germany, as it prepares to mass produce electric vehicles and overhaul its components division, which makes engines and steering parts.

REUTERS - Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) will invest 3.5 billion euros ($4 billion) by 2025 to build digital businesses and products including a cloud computing-based platform to connect vehicles and customers to offer services such as car sharing.

REUTERS - Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) said its components development and manufacturing business would become an independent entity within the group from January 2019, alongside the VW Passenger Cars business and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles.