Demand for electric vehicles is high, but some new vehicle dealers here say supply issues stemming from parts shortages and transportation logistics obstacles mean many customers are preordering a vehicle that will take up to a year to be delivered.

“Demand is spectacular,” says Craig Fruin, owner and general manager of Hyundai Spokane. “Our recent spike in gas prices has spurred that considerably.”

Electric vehicles include hybrid electric, fuel cell electric, and all-electric vehicles.

In 2021, 136 new electric vehicles were sold in Spokane County, according to the Washington state Department of Licensing. That’s more than double the activity reported in 2020, when 63 electric vehicles were sold countywide, which was up slightly from 59 in pre-pandemic sales in 2017. 

While sales are growing, electric vehicles still make up a miniscule portion of all new cars sold in the county – 0.49% in 2021. 

Fruin contends that electric vehicle manufacturers didn’t plan for current demand. As a result of shortages and inflation, costs for electric vehicles have increased. A 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5 starts at about $40,000, Fruin says.

“A lot of folks are priced out of the market on EVs currently,” he says.

Mario Wierzchowski, general manager of Corwin Ford Spokane, says that while price increases could be tempering demand, supply issues have thrown an element of unpredictability into ordering vehicles.

Manufacturers blame production slowdowns on microchip shortages, Wierzchowski says. Factory shutdowns and staffing shortages in Asia related to COVID-19 provided another challenge earlier in the pandemic, he says. Getting electric vehicles from the factory to the customer also has been difficult at times, he says.

“At one point six to eight months ago, we were struggling with trucking. There was a decrease in the number of truckers that were back to work, so there were some slowdowns,” Wierzchowski says. “For a while, there was a slowdown of goods being shipped over rail.”

Customers aren’t always patient about delays, Wierzchowski says. Some don’t understand the extent to which dealers rely on transportation companies and factories for delivery timelines. A vehicle that was promised to arrive in early November may not arrive until mid-December, he says.

“It’s been a world of apologizing for things we don’t have full control over,” he says. “We live in a world where you can buy a tube of toothpaste from Amazon and you can track it through every step of the way, but you buy an $80,000 truck and the dealership tells you, ‘We don’t know where it is.’ It’s kind of hard to take, as a consumer.”

Preordering has changed the industry, and now makes up most of Corwin Ford Spokane’s sales, Wierzchowski says.

“Three years ago, you’d come into the dealership, we’d have a couple hundred vehicles on the lot, and you could select what you wanted,” Wierzchowski says. “Now, I’d say 60% to 70% of all of our transactions are vehicles that have been preordered.”

This means that when a new electric vehicle dealer has a high-demand model on the lot, it sells quickly and for a higher price, he says.

“If there’s a hot product that’s available right now, that tends to be a little more expensive because there are more buyers looking for it right now who don’t want to wait five to 12 months,” Wierzchowski says.

At Hyundai Spokane, Fruin says the dealership has been certified to sell the Ioniq for two months.

“We’ve got three so far. They were each sold the first day we announced that we got them,” Fruin says.

Customers are being cautioned that their order for an Ioniq may take nine months or more to fulfill.

“We’re taking deposits on vehicles that we haven’t had allocated to us yet,” Fruin says.

Fruin contends it’s harder for Washington electric vehicle dealers to be competitive with the electric vehicle giant Tesla Inc., which comprised 69% of all electric vehicle sales in the U.S. in 2021, according to industry publication Electrek.

He says some states, such as California and Oregon, have adopted monetary penalties for manufacturers that don’t hit the minimum threshold for percentage of electric vehicle sales. Washington doesn’t currently have such penalties.

“Manufacturers don’t want to incur those penalties, so once the demand is met in those other jurisdictions, they can open up excess production to other states,” Fruin says. “Currently, in the Hyundai lineup anyway, I don’t get the Kona electric. If we throw the plug-in hybrid EVs into the mix, I currently don’t, nor does any other Washington state dealer, get an allocation of PHEVs. We are getting allocated Ioniq vehicles. However, it’s far less than a dealer my size would get in California or Oregon.”