Nissan asks dealers to suspend orders for Ariya electric car

According to foreign media reports, Nissan has stopped taking orders for the Ariya electric crossover in the United States.For Nissan, the Ariya is a key electric model, but the current supply chain in theelectric vehicleindustry is having problems.

Nissan Chief Operating Officer Ashwani Gupta said the company wanted to limit order volumes to those that could be delivered on time, rather than make eager customers wait too long and reduce customer satisfaction."Every customer wants to mention the new car as soon as possible, and we don't want them to wait too long," Gupta said, adding that Nissan needs to handle high demand from the U.S., Japan and Europe at the same time, with the model coming this fall. On sale in the US."Ariya is so popular all over the world that we had to suspend orders in the US," he said.

The Ariya is Nissan's second electric vehicle after the Leaf, which is also facing challenges with the launch of the new model line and delays in operations amid the pandemic and semiconductor crisis.Deliveries of the base Ariya in Japan only officially started in May this year, after the company had expected deliveries in March, and Nissan had expected the model to go on sale in 2021.

Image credit: Nissan

The electric car will be built at Nissan's Tochigi plant, north of Tokyo, which needs overseas suppliers for the new equipment.But a Nissan spokesman said travel restrictions due to the pandemic made it difficult for the supplier's engineers to travel to Japan to install equipment and confirm its operational status.

Nissan declined to say how many Ariyas were allocated for the U.S. market, but one U.S. dealer said it gave U.S. dealers two months to order about 6,000 Ariyas.Nissan disclosed in its most recent earnings report that it received 6,800 pre-orders for the Ariya in Japan and has already delivered 1,500 of the units in the country.

For Nissan's practice of limiting orders, some dealers expressed appreciation.Bill Wallace, CEO of Wallace Automotive Group, said: “We can certainly take more orders. However, taking too many orders and not delivering can leave customers unhappy. We support this approach of not over-promising. "