US chipmaker onsemi and the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade have agreed to conclude the company's planned silicon carbide (SiC) expansion in the Czech Republic, scrapping a project that was announced in June 2024 with an investment of up to USD 2 billion. The decision, reported on 9 November, ends the planned end-to-end SiC build-out in the country — but not onsemi's presence there.
Existing manufacturing and development operations will remain in place, and both sides have moved quickly to reaffirm their partnership. Czech officials stressed the value of the 'long-standing cooperation' with onsemi and highlighted the fact that the company continues to develop its R&D activities in the Czech Republic alongside its manufacturing operations — wording that suggests Prague still hopes to keep the supplier anchored domestically, even without the flagship expansion.
The reasons for the retreat look global rather than local. Czech media have linked the cancellation to low-cost Chinese SiC wafers, which have been undercutting established producers and squeezing margins across the silicon carbide supply chain. The implications reach into the automotive world: SiC is a key material in the power electronics of modern electric vehicles, enabling more efficient inverters and faster charging, so shifts in who makes it — and at what price — will ripple through the EV component chain.
The cancellation also lands at a curious moment for the chip sector at large. On Monday, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq ended sharply higher as investors bought into AI-related chip names such as Broadcom, yet the SiC segment tells a different story, with Chinese wafer pricing weighing on Western capacity plans. For Central and Eastern Europe, where governments have courted semiconductor investment as a way to deepen the region's automotive supply base, onsemi's decision is a reminder that even headline-scale projects can fall to shifts in global component pricing.
For dealers and buyers, the practical angle is simpler than the fab-level detail: silicon carbide is already inside the drive electronics of many newer electrified models, and supply dynamics like these will shape what that hardware costs going forward. Anyone in the market for a vehicle can browse and compare electrified models and conditions at WorldTrader24, Europe's marketplace with more than 70,000 vehicles, where a side-by-side price check remains the surest way to spot a genuinely good deal.
