VW e-Up order stop due to delivery issues

Volkswagen will disable orders for the VW e-Up on their internal dealer system beginning this Friday as the carmaker admits being unable to keep up with demand. Electrive was able to confirm this in Germany and also in the UK; the word is out.

In an internal email to dealers obtained by the German electrive site, Volkswagen says they want to inform traders about the order stop for the VW brand’s smallest and least expensive electric car.

The email reads: “The large number of orders of the current model, exceeds the delivery options at the moment. Against this background, we have decided not to accept any more orders.”

This will take effect on January 25 and Volkswagen has not specified a date for opening the order books for the e-Up again.

A quick search also found this to be true for the UK, where Volkswagen declares in bold letters online: “Due to long delivery lead times, the e-up! is currently closed for ordering.”

We have not yet found such notices on other country websites such as on VW Netherlands or VW France but it seems safe to assume that the situation will not be much better.

The increase in demand must have taken VW by surprise, a little at least given that the model was anything but a favourite when it came out about five years ago. However, VW had lowered the price by a couple of thousand euros (and 3,000 GBP in the UK) late last year and it appears demand has picked up since.

When saying that demand has picked up, we may still not talk huge numbers though – our latest report had VW saying that they build about a 1,000 electric cars a week in Germany, the e-Golf and e-Up together.

To be fair, Volkswagen is aware that they are far from being the volume electric vehicle manufacturer they aim to become. Whilst the e-Up does not utilise the MEB platform, VW is preparing to ramp up production for electric cars even more than initially planned, especially since the EU tightened their CO emissions regulation. Three factories in Germany will soon produce electric cars, namely the plants in Emden and Hanover, in addition to their plant in Zwickau (we reported).