Hurry Up and Wait: Car Launches Delayed in 2023

Matthew Guy
by Matthew Guy

Building cars is hard, and it turns out that building electric cars may be even harder. According to number posted by eggheads at tony consulting firm PwC, roughly a third of new vehicles had their launches skewered in 2023 – with EVs not helping matters in the slightest.


Speaking to the complexity of rolling out machines with which legacy automakers are still grappling, Akshay Singh, an automotive partner at PwC, opined that the “designs are not as mature as the old traditional components,” which may lead to “significant late changes and that contributes to the launch issues." We’ve covered numerous such examples of such delays in the past year, including the Volvo EX90 and frustrations at General Motors.


The latter is an easy target, especially for this website, but there can be no doubting the clustermug which could happen if vehicles of this sort are pushed out to market before they are fully baked. Witness the myriad of problems experienced by some other publications with the Chevrolet Blazer EV, news followed by an alleged cavalcade of similar tales after the likes of outlets such as Edmunds and InsideEVs published their stories. With the vast similarities underpinning the Equinox EV and Blazer EV, not to mention the Ultium guts in the General’s EV pickup trucks, pushing back launch dates probably isn’t a bad idea.


Back at PwC, they go on to elaborate that while 34 percent of all vehicle launches – 38, by their count – experienced delays in 2023, only 5 percent missed their target dates in 2018. While PwC doesn’t immediately give a figure for that year, our (very) unofficial count pegs the number anywhere between 35 and 40, so the sample size should be similar (and, more importantly, relevant). There were a slew of products from Lexus in ’18, plus the Wrangler, Crosstrek, Odyssey, Kona, and Traverse, just to name a few. To these jaundiced eyes, the lone mainstream EV trotted out that year was the Nissan Leaf, though please by all means feel free to correct us in the comments.


What does 2024 portend? With only four days left in this calendar year, we won’t have long to wait and find out.


[Image: GM]


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Matthew Guy
Matthew Guy

Matthew buys, sells, fixes, & races cars. As a human index of auto & auction knowledge, he is fond of making money and offering loud opinions.

More by Matthew Guy

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  • Syke Syke on Dec 28, 2023

    A lot of this is due to years of the legacy automakers continually living the dream of "if Tesla can do it, then we can do it easily, in less time, and deliver a better product, without breaking a sweat." I've been enjoying the wake-up calls over the past few years.

  • ToolGuy ToolGuy on Jan 01, 2024

    Look out, here comes 2024.

  • SCE to AUX Here's a crazy thought - what if China decides to fully underwrite the 102.5% tariff?
  • 3-On-The-Tree They are hard to get in and out of. I also like the fact that they are still easy to work on with the old school push rod V8. My son’s 2016 Mustang GT exhaust came loose up in Tuscon so I put a harbor freight floor jack, two jack stands, tool box and two 2x4 in the back of the vette. So agreed it has decent room in the back for a sports car.
  • Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh so what?? .. 7.5 billion is not even in the same hemisphere as the utterly stupid waste of money on semiconductor fabs to the tune of more than 100 billion for FABS that CANNOT COMPETE in a global economy and CANNOT MAKE THE US Independent from China or RUSSIA. we REQUIRE China for cpu grade silicon and RUSSIA/Ukraine for manufacturing NEON gas for cpus and gpus and other silicon based processors for cars, tvs, phones, cable boxes ETC... so even if we spend trillion $ .. we STILL have to ask china permission to buy the cpu grade silicon needed and then buy neon gas to process the wafers.. but we keep tossing intel/Taiwan tens of billions at a time like a bunch of idiots.Google > "mining-and-refining-pure-silicon-and-the-incredible-effort-it-takes-to-get-there" Google > "silicon production by country statista" Google > "low-on-gas-ukraine-invasion-chokes-supply-of-neon-needed-for-chipmaking"
  • ToolGuy Clearly many of you have not been listening to the podcast.
  • 1995 SC This seems a bit tonedeaf.
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