Car companies can't build enough electric cars to keep up with booming demand

• Want to ditch your gas guzzler for an electric vehicle? Get in line.
• Car companies like Ford, Volkswagen, and Mercedes are sold out of EVs for months to come.

For years, the world's car companies were hesitant to go all-in on electric cars. Now they can't make them fast enough.

Anyone looking to make the switch from dirty fossil fuels to clean battery power may be in for a long wait.

The supply of all new vehicles has been constrained throughout the pandemic due to a range of supply-chain issues, but the shortages are more acute in the electric-vehicle market, which doesn't have nearly as many options to begin with. Carmakers also say demand for their electric models has proved stronger than anticipated.

This month, Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess said the company is "basically sold out" of EVs in the US and Europe for the rest of 2022 because of higher-than-expected demand. That suggests that anyone looking for an electric model from the conglomerate — whether it's a Porsche Taycan, a Volkswagen ID.4, or an Audi E-Tron — will have to sit tight for at least several months.

"That's largely true for us as well," Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kallenius said at the same event. Mercedes-Benz recently launched the $103,000 EQS, a high-end electric sedan.

Ford CEO Jim Farley said in March that the Detroit automaker is similarly sold out of its Mustang Mach-E SUV and F-150 Lightning pickup truck "for a couple of years now." The ongoing computer-chip shortage plays a part in that, Farley said, but the company is "completely oversubscribed."

Ford stopped taking reservations for its electric truck after amassing 200,000 preorders. Orders are closed for the 2022 Mach-E as well, so buyers who want to custom order their SUV will need to wait until the 2023 model year.

The public should take these declarations with a grain of salt, since it's in an automaker's interest to give the impression that its vehicles are flying off the proverbial shelves, Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions, told Insider.

"The announcements are a combination of parts shortages and PR hype," Fiorani said.

Still, the comments reflect the broader state of the electric-car market. Right now, it's tough to get one's hands on a new battery-powered model in a pinch. Moreover, interest in EVs has surged as of late amid skyrocketing gas prices.

Tesla, the world's dominant electric-car company, has grown its production capacity at a furious pace in recent years but still hasn't caught up to demand. Order a base Tesla Model 3 sedan today, and it'll arrive as late as December, according to the company's website. Some Model X SUVs and Model S sedans won't be available until early 2023.

New EV startups like Lucid Motors and Rivian recently began delivering their first vehicles, but they do little to help satisfy the growing appetite for electric cars. Customers receiving their Lucid Air sedans and Rivian R1T pickups today placed their orders months or years ago, and anyone who orders one today will have to wait their turn behind thousands of earlier reservation holders.

Although car companies are trying rapidly grow their EV production to take advantage of economies of scale, they're also taking care not to overbuild, Fiorani said. In these early stages of the EV transition, companies still don't know how deep the demand for electric cars goes.

"We've been building internal combustion engine vehicles for the masses for well over a century, and building high-volume, relatively low-priced electric vehicles is a new thing," he said. "We just don't know how many people are out there waiting for them."