Faced with ridiculously long delivery times on certain models, Elon Musk could make a radical decision. At a conference organized by the Financial Times, the billionaire admitted that he was ready to suspend orders on the most demanded vehicles.
As you may know, Tesla had an exceptional first quarter of 2022 with 300,000 electric cars sold. Despite everything, the manufacturer assured that it was a particularly difficult period, the fault of the problems on the production line caused by the shortage of components. To this must also be added the drastic reduction of the Gigafactory in Shanghai due to Covid-19.
Inevitably, delivery times have exploded on the brand’s most popular models. On the Model Y Long Range, the Model X Long Range or the Model S Long Range, it is not uncommon to have to reach more than a year before getting his car. At a conference organized by the Financial Times, Elon Musk was asked about the difficulties the manufacturer is encountering in meeting growing demand. First, the billionaire was confident, assuring that Tesla will be able to sell all the cars it can make.
If demand is not a problem then, production is one on the other hand according to the owner of Twitter. “Currently, the lead time to order a Tesla is ridiculously long, so our problem isn’t demand, it’s production. Even before these supply chain issues, Tesla’s demand exceeded production. Now demand exceeds production to a ridiculous degree,” summed up the boss of SpaceX.
Suspend orders to avoid excessively long delivery times
To prevent delivery times from continuing to lengthen, Elon Musk admitted that the company could suspend orders on its most in-demand models. “In fact, we’ll probably limit or just stop taking orders for anything over a certain time frame because some timeframes are over a year.” he explains.
He adds that customers are already frustrated by the particularly long delivery times in force. To his eyes, this is moreover a sufficient reason for buyers to turn to other manufacturers. That’s why Elon Musk wants to focus on production, engineering and improving the supply chain rather than demand generation. Note that Tesla is not the only manufacturer struggling with this kind of problem. The Volkswagen Group recently announced that it is running out of electric vehicles in Europe and the United States until 2023.
Source : InsideEVs
