BERLIN (Reuters) – Mercedes-Benz customers are facing waiting times of more than a year for their orders because of interruptions to production caused by chip shortages, Daimler Chief Executive Ola Kallenius told a German newspaper in an interview on Friday.
“Demand is huge at Mercedes-Benz and at the same time there are unfortunately severe limitations,” he told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “For some models the waiting times are longer than we would like, in some cases over a year.”
Kaellenius repeated a previous forecast that the troubles with chip supply plaguing automakers worldwide would continue into 2023, as structural problems as well as pandemic-induced lockdowns in key supplier countries persist.
The delay in custom orders runs parallel with the issues surrounding sky-rocketing dealer prices for cars already on the lot. The markups on the Mercedes G-Class, as one extreme example, stretch well into the $100,000 range.
(Reporting by Victoria Waldersee, Editing by Louise Heavens)