Toyota Replaces Electronic Key With Mechanical One as Chip Shortage Shows No Mercy

It’s not a secret that many of them turned to temporary production halts, pretty much because they had no other option than to stop making cars until the chip supply was restored. Others tried to keep production going, but in return, they built cars without certain non-critical systems and then moved them all to parking lots.

The unfinished vehicles, however, ended up becoming quite a nightmare, especially as the chips to install the required systems on all of them rarely arrived on time.

Toyota is struggling with another chip problem, and this time, the issue isn’t affecting the cars it produces but the keys that come with them.

The company is no longer offering two so-called electronic smart car keys but just one to every buyer in Japan. This is because Toyota doesn’t have the chips to build enough electronic keys, so the second one will come in the form of a traditional, mechanical version.

In other words, a new car buyer in Japan is going to get one electronic and one mechanical car key, with Toyota itself explaining that the whole thing would be taking place temporarily until it manages to deal with the chip shortage. Furthermore, the automaker says it still plans to provide customers with a second smart key once the chip supply improves.

Needless to say, there’s no ETA as to when this could happen, but the good thing is that eventually, Toyota still wants to make up for this once the chip crisis is at least partially resolved.

The Japanese carmaker has recently announced that many of its domestic facilities would be temporarily shut down throughout November due to the chip shortage, with the production of several important models expected to be impacted.