Supply and demand: when the latter outweighs the former, you know you have a winner in your hands. BMW’s i8 is a prime example, with a waiting list that stretches up to 18 months.
Ian Robertson, the company’s sales and marketing chief, though thinks that the longest a customer should have to wait for a premium model is six months. Unless, of course, you want are willing to pay a hefty premium…
“We need to find ways to increase i8 production because the waiting list in some markets are getting too long”, he told Autonews Europe.
Robertson would not disclose the current production rate at BMW’s Leipzig plant, where the i8 is assembled, nor the increase in volume that he has in mind other than saying that annual sales will stay “in the low single-digit thousands” in order to keep the plug-in hybrid sports car a low-volume product.
IHS Automotive estimates that production of the i8 will reach 3,288 units this year and rise to 4,318 in 2015.
Since it went on sale (in June in Europe and two months later in the US), 760 cars have been delivered to customers, more than half (419) of which in October.