Jaguar Land Rover struggles to meet demand for new Defender, plug-in hybrids

LONDON -- Jaguar Land Rover is sitting on an order bank of almost 100,000 vehicles as it struggles to meet demand for the new Land Rover Defender off-roader and plug-in hybrid versions of its vehicles amid microchip shortages.

The waiting list for some plug-in hybrid models is approaching 12 months, Jaguar Land Rover chief financial officer Adrian Mardell told investors on Tuesday when the company announced its latest quarterly earnings.

"It's the result of the supply side," Mardell said, citing the semiconductor shortage and issues around manufacturing plug-in hybrids. "Expect those order books to normalize in six, nine- or 12-months' time," he said.

Most of the backed-up orders were from mainland Europe and the company's UK home market, Mardell said.

JLR CEO Thierry Bollore said the company lost production of 7,000 units because of the semiconductor shortage in the company's latest quarter that ended March 30.

The company gave no guidance on how the shortage would affect production for the next financial year.

Mardell said: "We won't yet know the scale of impact from the semiconductor challenges." The order bank for the Defender is now above 20,000, he said. Retail sales for the vehicle are approaching 7,000 a month, up from the predicted 5,000, he told investors.The order bank when the Defender first went on sale in April last year stood around 8,000, JLR figures show. The company sold 45,244 of the Defender in the financial year.

Orders for JLR's plug-in hybrids are especially backed up as customers in Europe seek to take advantage of lower tax impacts due to the electrified drivetrain's lower CO2 emissions.

"There is particular emphasis on plug-in hybrids. They have had a dramatic impact on our market," Mardell said. "Some of those have a 12-month waiting list so clearly those customers are going to have to be super patient with us."

Mardell did not expand on the plug-in hybrid production issues, but the company paused sales of its Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Discovery Sport P300e plug-in models last October over issues with their stated CO2 output.

Sales of plug-in hybrid models reached 7.3 percent of total JLR sales globally in the quarter, compared to 4.6 percent for company's full financial year. Sales of the full-electric Jaguar I-Pace accounted for 1.8 percent of sales in the quarter.

Full-year loss

Jaguar Land Rover lost 861 million pounds in the financial year ending March 30 after writing off 952 million pounds ($1.2 billion) for the cancellation of a large portion of its Modular Longitudinal Architecture and another 571 million pounds of restructuring costs.

Without the write-offs JLR posted an EBIT margin of 2.6 percent for the year, it said.

The company has slimmed its volume ambitions under new CEO Thierry Bollore, including turning Jaguar into an EV-only brand from 2025 and backing away from its one-million annual target.