VW’s EV Order Books Are Full for 2022 and It’s Solely Could

After months of battling provide chain challenges, Volkswagen Group has offered greater than 99,000 battery-electric autos throughout the first quarter of 2022. This has positioned the automaker to be the second-largest provider of EVs by quantity on the planet, proper behind Tesla. There’s only one drawback: its complete model portfolio is successfully offered out of electrical vehicles for the remainder of the yr, making a backlog of orders reaching into 2023.

“We have now very excessive order books and order consumption on electrical autos. That accounts for all of our fashions from ID.3, ID.4, the Audi fashions,” mentioned Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess in an interview with Monetary Instances. “We’re principally offered out on electrical autos in Europe and in america. And in China, it’s actually selecting up.”

Now, let’s be clear: VW is not offered out in a approach meaning it will not be delivering any extra of those autos to clients this yr. It additionally doesn’t suggest that VW or its little one manufacturers will cease taking pre-orders and reservations—fairly the other, really. At the moment, manufacturers will proceed to take orders on autos, although they won’t be stuffed till 2023 relying on the mannequin and market, and what number of of these pre-orders really translate right into a sale.

An enormous a part of why Volkswagen has amassed a backlog is because of car provide. Manufacturing has been stifled considerably because of components shortages attributable to the worldwide semiconductor disaster, the Russia-Ukraine battle, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This has led to a fairly giant divergence from Volkswagen’s general 2022 gross sales goal of practically 700,000 electrified autos from each a provide and demand side, particularly with gross sales dwindling in China, one of many automaker’s largest EV markets.

“We are able to affirm that demand is at the moment very excessive and our order books are thus properly stuffed,” mentioned a VW spokesperson in a press release to The Drive. “We may ship many extra autos to clients if there have been no provide constraints. As a consequence, we at the moment have longer supply occasions, particularly for all-electric fashions, that in some instances attain into 2023.”

In the meantime, VW can also be seeking to as soon as once more change into related within the U.S. market the place its “greatest competitor” Tesla calls residence. Within the first quarter of 2022, Tesla offered greater than thrice VW’s electrical car output regardless of comparable challenges within the international market. However for that to occur—particularly within the battery-powered phase—VW wants to attain extra market share regardless of its provide hurdles.

VW says that it’s “working relentlessly” to scale back the backlog of orders, although that’s depending on international components shortages. The auto trade expects the worldwide semiconductor shortages to ease within the second half of this yr, although VW specifically additionally has different hurdles to beat. The automaker has a number of suppliers in Ukraine affected by current conflicts, making it troublesome for its manufacturers to acquire sure wiring harnesses and switches vital for car manufacturing. VW says that it has been seeking to discover an alternate technique of manufacturing within the interim.

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