Nissan has stopped taking orders for the 2023 Ariya in the US as production of the electric SUV in Japan is affected by supply chain issues.
This is not the first time the Ariya factory is seeing disruptions as it also faced delays in getting the EV's new production line up and running when the pandemic and semiconductor crises hit in 2020.
As a result of the latest manufacturing hiccup, Nissan's chief operating officer Ashwani Gupta said it is better to limit orders to what can realistically be delivered in a timely manner rather than making eager customers wait too long for their cars.
"Every customer wants to have it, and we don't want customers to wait. Ariya has been successfully accepted around the world. Even in the United States, we had to request our customers to stop the orders."
It is not yet clear for how long Nissan plans to keep Ariya orders closed in the US. We checked the automaker's US customer website and the Ariya page displays a "reservations are now closed" message (see the screenshot at the bottom of this page).
The executive added that Nissan is dealing with high demand for the 2023 Ariya from the United States, Japan and Europe.
Deliveries of the base Ariya model began in Japan in May, after initially being scheduled to start in March. In its latest earnings announcement, Nissan said it had received 6,800 preorders in Japan, where it has already delivered 1,500 vehicles.
Nissan's second mass-produced EV after the Leaf will go on sale this fall in the US, but the automaker did not say how many vehicles will be delivered to the country. However, one US dealer told Automotive News that Nissan has allotted about 6,000 vehicles to the United States market, adding that retailers were given a two-month window to order them.
The same report notes that some dealers applauded Nissan's decision not to overpromise and underdeliver on the new EV.
The Nissan Ariya is manufactured in a dedicated new section of the automaker's Tochigi assembly complex north of Tokyo, called the Intelligent Factory. The plant's ramp-up schedule was affected by COVID-related travel restrictions, which prevented supplier engineers from visiting Japan and install the required new equipment shipped from overseas.
