The ongoing shortage of semi-conductor in the tech industry has caused numerous marques to consider removing chip-reliant technologies in their cars in order to maintain supply.
Among the latest brands to cull features from their cars in order to keep deliveries going is Skoda. The firm’s Australian arm has announced that it will be temporarily removing certain features from the majority of its line-up.
The news impacts all models in the Skoda line-up barring the Karoq crossover. This means the Scala, Kamiq, Octavia, Superb, and Kodiaq all have a bevy of missing features.
Lost features on include numerous active safety elements, with rear cross traffic alert and blind spot monitoring being among the biggest casualties.
The Canton sound system and adaptive headlights are also on the chopping block, although it’s been reported that the features being impacted are changing constantly.
As part of the feature delete, customers purchasing affected cars will get a credit to account for the lesser spec. Skoda Australia also says that customers can also wait for their desired specification to arrive if they want.
Skoda Australia says it expects the issue to be remedied with the introduction of the 2023 model year models, which kicks off in Q3 of 2022.
The list of brands shipping cars with reduced features is a long one, although customers in Australia seem to be impacted less than most, with supply being a more prevalent issue.
Late last year BMW confirmed that it was producing numerous models, including the 3 Series, X5, and X6, without touchscreens in order to keep its factories going.
Nissan removed the navigation systems from some of its models temporarily, with sister brand Renault and its French rival Peugeot removing digital clusters from some of its models, too.
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