The scarcity of semiconductors and the recent transformations on the automotive market

Abstract

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the scarcity of semiconductors affected the automotive chain in Brazil. The production electronic devices in general, whose consumption also impacts the automotive market, depends on these microchips. This article aims to analyze recent displacements in the automobile system, through contemporary transformations in the circulation of this component. This analysis is based on ethnographic data produced in the Santos Port and a car dismantling store in São Paulo. We argue that such transformations must be understood at the intersection between physical and communicative mobilities which reverberates around the automotive chains in a transnational scale.