Luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz India is seeing strong demand for its products. However, supply-side constraints are driving up waiting periods for customers, a senior company official said.
“When you talk purely about the demand side, we are seeing a very strong order bank and bookings coming in. If we add up what we are able to sell along with the demand, we are almost back to even 2019 level. But we are unable to cater to this,” said Santosh Iyer, vice president, Sales and Marketing, Mercedes-Benz India, told The Hindu .
Mr. Iyer added that for some cars such as the Maybach GLS and G63 AMG, the company had started taking orders even for the next year, and the waiting period for different models currently ranges between four weeks and six months.
“For us, the bigger challenge is on the supply side in the second half of the year because with the festival season and our product portfolio, we expect the demand to continue. And if we are able to supply, we should definitely see a good H2 also,” he said.
Mr. Iyer added that while the impact of the third wave of the pandemic could not be predicted, how the festive season turns out for the company will largely be determined by availability of cars.
“There is a logistics issue worldwide so the availability of certain components and parts, including semiconductors, cause a bit of challenge in catering to the demand. Since the pandemic is global and the automotive components come from different parts of the world, the overall supply chain is under stress and there are delayed shipments. It all adds to our challenges,” he said.
The automobile firm introduced two new products on Thursday: the Mercedes-AMG E 53 4MATIC priced at ₹1.02 crore and the Mercedes-AMG E 63 S 4MATIC+ with a price tag of ₹1.7 crore. “The launch of these two performance sedans in the AMG portfolio takes our total tally to 10 launches in the year…There is definitely a big demand for performance cars right now that we are witnessing. In AMG, we have seen three times growth, compared to last year, in the first half of this year.”
