Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ambitions to turn Germany into a semiconductor powerhouse have suffered a fresh blow after US tech company Wolfspeed shelved plans to build a factory in the country, prompting the opposition to claim his industrial policy was in tatters.
Wolfspeed was to have built a €3bn factory in the town of Ensdorf, in western Germany, to produce silicon carbide chips widely used in electric vehicles. But the plans have been hit by falling European demand for EVs.
In a statement, Wolfspeed said it was “suspending [its] plans to build our next [fabrication plant] in Ensdorf at this time”, citing a “more modest” increase in EV adoption than previous forecasts.