Soaring demand for Toyota's gasoline-electric hybrids has left suppliers struggling to keep pace, leading to shortages of parts and months-long waits for car buyers, according to four people familiar with the situation.
Stocks of hybrids are low at Toyota dealers across major markets, including the US, Japan, China and Europe, two of the people told Reuters. The surge in demand presents a challenge for Toyota, the dominant player in hybrids. However, it also vindicates the Japanese automaker's bet on the technology against predictions by some rivals that battery-only electric vehicles would wipe out hybrid demand.
Global sales of hybrids, including plug-in models, have almost tripled to 16.1-million from 5.7-million over the past five years, according to data provided by LMC Automotive.
Toyota's European customers are waiting on average 60 to 70 days for new hybrids, about double the duration in 2020, one of the people said. Vehicles with the heaviest demand and shortest supply in Europe include the Yaris Cross hybrid and RAV4 plug-in hybrid, according to Toyota.
In Japan, buyers are waiting two to five months for many models, a Toyota website shows.
At one US West Coast dealership, Prius hybrids were sold out in mid-February and only a handful of Camry hybrids were available, another person said.
In India, an important growth market for Toyota, delivery times have improved since last year but are two to nine months depending on the model, another person said.
Reuters interviewed 10 industry figures, including people at Toyota and its suppliers, who described bottlenecks affecting the hybrid supply chain. Details of the parts and suppliers involved, and some measures Toyota is considering to ease the strain in one market, have not been previously reported.
Toyota said demand for hybrids had increased “significantly in the past year in all regions” and it was doing its best to boost production in response. The automaker said it had improved vehicle delivery lead-times over the past year.
“The production capacity for hybrid parts and components from our suppliers and our in-house parts manufacturing is line with our annual production plans and vehicle assembly capacity,” it said.