Audi revises e-tron production targets downwards
Audi has reduced the e-tron production target for this year at its Brussels plant by more than 10,000 units to 45,242 units, due to supply issues. Also, production of Audi’s second electric model, the e-tron Sportback, is to be postponed until 2020.
The Brussels Times reported on both production adjustments citing internal sources. So far there has been no official statement from Audi, but apparently, the production problems stem from supply bottlenecks for LG Chem batteries said the BT sources. At the end of March this year, German radio station Bayerischer Rundfunk also reported on a battery bottleneck in e-tron production, saying that the German company could only produce about half of the originally announced 300 e-Tron per day due to the battery shortage. Audi’s battery supply comes from the LG-Chem plant in Poland.
According to the new report, the production difficulties were caused not only by the batteries but also by a shortage of electric motors, which can be traced back to a strike in January at the Hungarian Audi plant in Györ. In Brussels, workers currently only work six hours a day instead of eight, and production is soon to be reduced from five to four working days a week. The delivery time of the e-tron has increased by two months to six to seven months.
According to the manufacturer, there are more than 20,000 advance orders for the e-tron worldwide – a third of these are from Norway alone. After a few delays, the electric car was delivered in Europe throughout the last few weeks. Deliveries in the USA are scheduled to start in May. In China, the model will arrive at dealers in the second half of the year.
Test drives were already possible before, and our editor-in-chief Peter Schwierz shortly tested the first serial electric SUV from Ingolstadt in March for a weekend in Berlin and Brandenburg to experience what Audi does differently.
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