Volkswagen (VW) car wanters will have to wait next year to be Volkswagen car havers.
According to VW CEO Herbert Diess, the company has sold more than 90,000 electric vehicles (EVs), or its entire inventory of EVs, in Europe and the United States for 2022, leaving those who wish to purchase one to wait until next year to get their order, per the Financial Times.
Other car brands under the VW Group, such as Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bently, and Bugatti, are also sold out.
Volkswagen Car Sell Out Details
The Financial Times' report mentioned that VW sold out its entire electric vehicle in Europe and the US due to the ongoing semiconductor shortage and the production issues due to China's Zero-COVID policy and its resulting shutdowns and quarantine procedures.
You may remember that China was forced to seal off cities with confirmed cases of COVID-19's Omicron variant to contain the virus, per BBC. The Chinese government also placed ts largest city and financial center, Shanghai, in quarantine.
Shanghai houses some of VW's 33 production plants in China, according to VW's press release.
The sell-out gave VW a long backlog of orders that the company expects to continue growing. However, due to the previously mentioned challenges, VW found it difficult to cater to them on time.
The semiconductor shortage has forced some of VW's remaining plants to halt or slow down production. Some automakers have even resorted to removing some features from various EVs to ship them out as soon as possible.
Currently, VW has an EV backlog of 300,000 cars in Western Europe alone, according to Ars Technica's report. Meanwhile, Carsoops reported that the company has a backlog of ID.4 orders in the United States, which are imported from Europe.
Fortunately, a VW spokesperson told Carscoops that the automaker would be producing ID.4s in Chattanooga this summer, adding that the locally produced cars will be MY23s.
The spokesperson did not say when the cars from Chattanooga would be available for purchase.
Race Towards The Top
The Financial Times also reported that VW wants to out-perform Tesla's sales during the first quarter of 2022 but wasn't unable due to the previously mentioned constraints to its production line.
Although VW managed to sell more than 90,000, it wasn't able to break the 100,000 mark, which is way under Tesla's 310,000 delivered vehicles in the same period.
The company previously aimed to sell around 700,000 EVs for the whole of 2022 to keep up with Tesla's sales.
However, VW is working on increasing production by increasing its presence in the US, as evidenced by its spokesperson's announcement cited earlier.
Diess also told The Verge earlier in 2022 that the company is trying to expand its presence in the US, saying that he expects VW's growth in the US will mostly come from EVs.
Additionally, VW CFO Arno Antlitz expressed his confidence that VW's electric business would eventually come up to speed, saying that the company is expecting "a constantly growing battery electric vehicle volume and share in every quarter of 2022."
