Looking to buy a new car? Wait times could stretch up to 2023, experts say

Along with supply chain problems, one of the main reasons for the delay in vehicle deliveries is due to the global chip shortage.

A global vehicle shortage has caused delays across Canada for those on the hunt for a new car, with no end in sight until 2023.

“Consumers have to be habituated and educated to the fact that there’s not the usual lot full of cars to choose from,” Huw Williams, national spokesperson for the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association told Global News.

“The shortage of automobile vehicles in Canada is part of a worldwide phenomenon. There is an absolute worldwide shortage of vehicle production at the moment,” he said.

At the beginning of the year, the association believed the delays would subside by the end of summer.

However, they no longer say this will be the case.

“We’re actually now predicting it’s going to be into 2023, that there’s going to be this unusual period of delay,” said Williams.

Jesse Waddell, from Calgary, hoped to be able to sit in a vehicle — feel it, touch it, and maybe even go for a test drive in it — when visiting the dealership to search for a new car earlier in April.

“(Dealerships) really don’t have anything. You might be lucky to find one vehicle that’s even in the model you want, but forget the trim and all the other fixings,” Waddell told Global News.