Japanese carmaker, Nissan Motor, has reportedly announced that it will be temporarily halting new orders for its recently launched light electric car, Sakura, due to increasingly prolonged delivery times.

According to a company spokesperson, the orders of Sakura EV are currently taking up to a year or more to be delivered to customers. The spokesperson added that to address this backlog, the firm is stopping new orders for the fully electric micro car, also known as Kei car in Japan, by the end of this month.

The temporary suspension was announced on the carmaker’s website this week, with no indication of how soon the firm will resume orders.

In Nissan’s home market, gasoline-electric hybrid cars are still more popular than the fully electric models. However, Nissan hopes to attract more Japanese drivers to EVs by offering low-priced micro models, like Sakura.

Apart from Sakura, Nissan also announced that it will not be taking new orders for its crossover sports utility model, X-Trail, for the same reason as Sakura, with the spokesperson adding that the suspension is only for Japan.

The spokesperson stated that the company is not able to give its customers a delivery date response.

This move comes at a time where the Japanese carmaker is witnessing strong demand amid a global supply shortage of semiconductor chips, leading to uncertainty in the production plans for the next financial year. According to the spokesperson, this is the reason behind the prolonged delivery periods

Sakura was introduced earlier in May this year, and was the first light EV developed jointly with its alliance partner Mitsubishi Motors, a major Japanese automaker.

Back in July, Nissan stated that Sakura attracted orders for more than 23,000 units, surpassing the total number of fully electric cars the company sold last year.

This is not the first time that Nissan has taken such a step. Previously in August, the company announced that it will stop taking new orders for its recently launched, Leaf EV, currently available in Japan only, from late September.

Source credit: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/nissan-stops-taking-orders-sakura-ev-x-trail-japan-3040521