Beating the new car waiting times

In 2021, car manufacturers were severely impacted by a semiconductor chip shortage making it almost impossible to meet customer demand for new cars. COVID lockdowns mean that people couldn’t get new cars while dealers were shut in 2020, compounding the demand even further.

Several firms are still feeling the impact, with many predicting that supply shortages will persist well beyond 2022.

These chips are essential in the manufacturing of new cars and as a result many customers now face long lead times of up to 12 months before they’re able to take delivery of their new vehicles.

Although this compounded demand and lack of supply has posed a problem for many leasing companies, at Octopus Electric Vehicles we’ve been busy behind the scenes planning on how we will continue to meet the needs of our customers.

In this recent Daily Mail article, our CEO Fiona Howarth talked about the chip shortage and the impact it’s had on lead times for drivers who want access to a wide range of makes and models.

'A number of new, exciting, [EV] models have arrived on the market and given a lot of people lots of different options. The problem is that they’re not actually available.

'Even when we’re looking to pre-order some vehicles, we’re not able to get our hands on some from traditional manufacturers because they just don’t have the supply.’

We saw these supply challenges approaching and our team came up with a plan to get ahead of the game. We’ve been working hard in the background to make sure that we can get our customers the cars they want, faster.

To match the demand of our customers with a good supply of cars, we got in there early and preordered 80% of our forecasted stock for the first half of 2022.

This means that we have either physical vehicles waiting at dealerships for new drivers to take home, or we’ve reserved the factory slots with key car manufacturers so we have the supply to meet the growing demand for EVs.

We’re also in the midst of firming up our new car reservations for the second half of the year.

We’ve ordered some of the most popular makes and models of cars, in a range of different colours which will be available to our customers as soon as next month. Our customers will be able to get their hands on popular Tesla, Polestar, Hyundai and Kia models as soon as March 2022.

There’s no better time to sign up as an Octopus Electric Vehicles customer through our salary sacrifice scheme.

Once your business is signed up, your team can place an order for an EV and start driving it this year. You could be even be driving some models within a few weeks. With Octopus Electric Vehicles, you’ll be further down the road towards net-zero than other companies waiting longer for their cars to be delivered.