Earlier this week, we announced a potential shortage of carbon fiber for the BMW i3 production due to the Asian typhoon. Today, we have confirmation that some future BMW i3 owners are receiving notifications of a two weeks delay for their electric vehicles. BMW M3 and M4 owners are also reporting a few weeks delay for their high-performance cars due to the shortage of carbon fiber roofs.
The typhoon has created a delay on shipments from Asia to United States, and in this case, carbon fiber raw materials coming from plants in Japan. Without any raw materials, the Moses Lake plant which produces carbon fiber for BMW has to shut down its furnaces. Restarting a furnace is said to take up to a week sometimes.
The cloth travels to Landshut and/or Leipzig for processing/pressing into CFRP panels, hence the production shortage.
The delay doesn’t appear to be significant at this point but we expect to learn more in the next few days as the Supply & Chain systems are being updated.
