Maruti Suzuki India, the country's largest carmaker by volume, has said that it is currently facing a backlog of about 2.5 lakh pending orders in India. This is mainly due to the challenges caused by the global shortage in the supply of electronic components, which has taken a big hit on vehicle production. The backlog on pending orders has also led to long waiting periods on cars. While the average waiting period for petrol cars vary from 9 to 12 weeks, the same for CNG models go up to 17 to 18 weeks. These, of course, will differ based on model and variants.
The average waiting period for a CNG model from Maruti Suzuki has right now around 17 to 18 weeks
Speaking with carandbike Shashank Srivastava, Senior Executive Director (Marketing & Sales), Maruti Suzuki India said, "Roughly we have about 2,50,000 pending bookings, so, that would be roughly about 9 weeks of waiting, on an average. However, model-wise it varies, and fuel-type-wise it varies. For example, CNG waiting period are about 17 to 18 weeks." In fact, even the newly launched Maruti Suzuki Celerio currently commands a waiting period of up to 12 weeks.
Also Read: Maruti Suzuki To Increase Vehicle Prices From January 2022
While production constraints have been one of the major issues for the company, things are improving. Srivastav said, "Semiconductor shortage considered, there has been an improvement over the previous months. So, in September we were producing only 40 per cent of our plant production (capacity), October was about 60 per cent, November was about 83-84 per cent, and December should also be around 85 per cent. So, directionally there is an improvement as far as the availability of semiconductors is concerned. However, going forward, we feel that this semiconductor issue is likely to be there for some time."
Also Read: Maruti Suzuki Expects Up To 20% Decline In December Production Due To Chip Shortage
Maruti Suzuki says directionally there is an improvement in availability of semiconductors, but the issue is likely to be there for some time
Also Read: Car Sales November 2021: Maruti Suzuki Sees 9% Decline In Sales
In November 2021, Maruti Suzuki India's total vehicle production, passenger vehicles + light commercial vehicles (LCV), stood at 145,560 units. The company's total wholesales for the same month stood at 1,39,184 units, while the total retail figures for November 2021 stood at a little over 103,000 units.
