Company says it expected 5k Defenders a month, selling 7k
12-month wait for some PHEV models
Jaguar Land Rover’s latest plug-in models, as well as the new Defender, are extremely popular. So popular that a new report says the automaker has a backlog of nearly 100,000 orders that it is struggling to produce as it works around both that popularity and the ongoing semiconductor shortage.
On the company’s last earnings call, reports Automotive News Europe, JLR CFO Adrian Mardell told investors that the waiting list for some of the automaker’s PHEV models is approaching a full year. Most of those backed-up orders were from mainland Europe as well as the home market.
While the semiconductor shortage was to blame, CEO Thierry Bollore said that the last quarter saw just 7,000 units of lost production. That means the remainder are simply customers wanting more vehicles than Jaguar and Land Rover had expected, especially the new Land Rover Defender.
“Expect those order books to normalize in six, nine- or 12-months’ time,” Mardell said, though he acknowledged the full impact of the chip shortage wasn’t yet known. He said that Defender order books are now above 20,000, with retail sales of 7,000 a month nearly 50 percent more than expected.
Meanwhile, PHEV models now make up 7.3 percent of global JLR sales, that Q1 figure up from 4.6 for financial year 2020. The I-Pace EV made up 1.8 percent of quarterly sales. Mardell said that PHEV customers “are going to have to be super patient with us.”
The automaker recently changed tack under the new CEO, including Jaguar becoming an all-EV brand by 2025, lowering sales targets, and scrapping much of a new platform it had in development.
