At this point, every major automaker has been hit by the massive semiconductor chip shortage. Ford has thousands of trucks waiting for chips, GM started taking features out of trucks to limit chip usage, and now Jeep is halting production on the Jeep Gladiator. 

Good luck getting a new Jeep Gladiator now

According to The Drive, the Jeep Gladiator is only made at the south plant of Stellantis’ Toledo, Ohio assembly complex. Due to the lack of chips, that factory will be halting production until the chips start flowing again. However, the north plant that makes the more popular Jeep Wrangler will remain operational for the time being. 

A Jeep Spokesperson told The Drive, “Stellantis continues to work closely with our suppliers to mitigate the manufacturing impacts caused by the various supply chain issues facing our industry. Due to the unprecedented global microchip shortage, production at the Toledo South Assembly Plant will be down the week of Aug. 2.”

This is fairly light considering where some other automakers are

Compared to Ford’s collection of unfinished F-series trucks that can be seen from space, the Jeep Gladiator plant shutdown is only currently affecting one model and only for a week, as of now. 

Even though this seems pretty low-impact comparatively, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares is not overly hopeful about the bigger picture. As The Drive notes, Tavares recently said at Automotive Press Association event in Detroit, “the semiconductor crisis, from everything I see and I’m not sure I can see everything, is going to drag into ’22 easy because I don’t see enough signs that additional production from the Asian sourcing points is going to come to the West in the near future.”

Tavares isn’t alone in his pessimism. Many other CEOs of major automakers have been singing similar songs of doom and gloom lately. GM, Ford, and Toyota continue to state that this problem isn’t going away anytime soon. 

The lack of chips puts everyone behind. The more that happens, the more backorders pile up. So even once the chip production is back up to speed, there are just exponentially more cars in need of them than usual. It is a problem that will grow unless something drastic happens to ease the growing demand for chips.

Jeep Gladiators might get a lot harder to buy

Although the Jeep Gladiator isn’t the most popular midsize truck, something tells me that’s about to change. As production stops on the Jeep Gladiators, the demand will inevitably increase. These sorts of things tend to pull folks who were on the fence over pretty hard. 

As we go deeper into the new car shortage and used car price hike, used Jeep Gladiators will undoubtedly jump in value. As that begins to trickle into used car lots, the demand will also increase as people learn how hard it is to get their hands on one. 

We are truly in unprecedented times. As COVID-19 continues to ramp up among the unvaccinated, production is once again threatened. This unfortunate situation, paired with the ongoing supply chain and chip shortage issues, makes the future of production very unstable. More plant shutdowns are likely to follow as fall and winter descend upon these Covid times and the chip shortage rages on.