- Volkswagen CEO Herbert diess said the company's electric vehicles in Europe and the United States were "basically sold out" this year, the Financial Times reported** This means that anyone who wants to get EV from Volkswagen, Audi or other brands of the group may have to wait until 2023, as the company is trying to solve problems such as chip shortage and covid shutdown in China.
According to the film, Volkswagen expects its backlog of orders to continue to increase. At present, there are many people on its list waiting for electric vehicles, and more are expected to be added throughout the year. But supply chain problems will make it difficult to fill these orders. Due to the lack of chips, almost every carmaker has to stop or slow down production. Some people even hesitate to strip features from their vehicles just to get them offline. In addition, electric vehicles also need a large number of batteries, and the production of batteries is also a challenge.
In addition, it is understood that Volkswagen's sales of electric vehicles in the first quarter of 2022 are slightly less than 100000. For comparison, Tesla - according to its latest revenue - sold about 310000 vehicles in the same period.
Volkswagen is not entirely the only one who has difficulty keeping up with the demand for electric vehicles. Ford's F-150 lightning model said on its website that "retail orders are no longer accepted for current models", and it stopped accepting reservations for the electric pickup in December.
Diess said in an interview with the verge earlier this year that the company was working hard to develop its business in the United States. In an interview with decoder, he said that he expected the company's growth in the United States to mainly come from electric vehicles, but he also pointed out that the company may have a tight supply throughout 2022.