FRANKFURT — Europe must pitch in money to spice up the area’s chip trade, a board member at Volkswagen Group stated, pointing to a world semiconductor scarcity that has highlighted dependence on overseas gamers.

“We cannot produce chips ourselves,” Markus Duesmann, VW Group’s board member for R&D and CEO of Audi, advised Reuters. “However in fact we want to have robust chipmakers which are at the least on par with Asia and the US.”

He stated “know-how is decisive” for VW Group’s success, including that Europe must be main in future applied sciences akin to software program and chips.

One solution to obtain this, he stated, may very well be funding applications modeled after an current plan to spice up Europe’s battery cell know-how below a scheme referred to as Necessary Venture of Frequent European Curiosity (IPCEI).

Germany on Wednesday stated European nations have been planning to assist the native manufacturing of know-how {hardware}, together with processors and semiconductors, through an IPCEI, with focused support that might lead to investments of as much as 50 billion euros ($60 billion).

Nevertheless, the precise stage of funding and the query of who pays the invoice haven’t been specified.

International automakers have been caught off guard by a scarcity of essential semiconductors within the wake of a speedy restoration of the automotive market, highlighting the necessity to reduce dependency on Asian producers.

VW Group has doubled its funds for software program growth, a key space to deal with the challenges of autonomous driving, Duesmann stated, including this was one of many drivers to create the Automobile.Software program.Org unit with 5,000 workers.

The corporate additionally owns a 40 p.c stake in U.S. self-driving startup Argo AI, with Ford proudly owning an equal share, however Duesmann stated pursuing each paths was completely according to the automaker’s technique and product portfolio.

“These are completely different strands when it comes to growth,” he stated, “and we’ll proceed [to develop] them like that.”