The crisis in semi-conductors has kept customers waiting for their new car deliveries from one month to as long as two years in the case of Mahindra XUV 700.

While original equipment manufacturers across the industry are addressing supplier issues and increasing investments on behalf of suppliers, the crisis seems to linger. The longest waiting period is for the Mahindra XUV 700, which has a wait period ranging from 18-24 months.

Maruti is facing the heat on CNG vehicles. The company said it has a total order bank of 295,000 vehicles of which 1,45,000 are CNG.

“The CNG waitlist is for about five to nine weeks,” said a company spokesperson. The rest of 150,000 orders are for ICE vehicles where the waiting period ranges between three weeks and six weeks.

“We are working closely with vendors but they are also waiting for the semiconductors issue to resolve,” added the spokesperson.

Hyundai’s average waiting period is five months. For Creta, it goes up to eight months while Alcazar has a wait of four to five months and Venue three to four months.

For Tata Motors the waiting period ranges from 15 days to four months.

“The demand for our ‘New Forever’ range continues to be strong even as the semiconductor situation and supply-side challenges remain uncertain. While the waiting period on our cars range from 15 days to 4 months, depending on the model and variants, we continue to monitor the situation closely while refining our agile, multi-pronged approach to secure supplies and reduce the wait time,” said Rajan Amba, Vice President, Sales, Marketing and Customer Care, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Ltd.

Speaking at the Mahindra and Mahindra financial results press conference, Rajesh Jejurikar, executive director, farm and auto sector, said: “We have a monthly production of 5000 vehicles for XUV700. The monthly bookings are 9500 units. And the open bookings stand at 78000.”

When asked if Mahindra faced cancellations, Jejurikar said, “Cancellations for XUV 700 is not more than 10 to 12 per cent. People are booking in advance and not selling their old vehicles. We are ramping up production. We are also increasing investments in our suppliers.”

About the impending launch of Scorpio N and the kind of waiting period customers might face, Jejurikar said: “We have already started production even before the reveal of the vehicle. We will start with an order bank but we have a forecasting model. We did not get the mix right for the XUV 700. The MX variant got five per cent of the bookings whereas the AX variants got over a lakh bookings.”

The AX7 variant of the XUV 700 has over 200 semiconductor chips and the company was not ready for the high demand for the higher variants. Jejurikar said the company has made a Rs 2,000 crore capital expenditure for capacity addition.