A gaggle of May sales reports from different regions and companies affirm that the slump in demand for new vehicles that at least some industry executives feared has not happened – so far.
In China, BYD boosted sales by 14 percent in May compared to April, according to preliminary figures from the China Passenger Car Association. That growth was ahead of the 2.4 percent month over month improvement reported for Tesla in the world’s largest vehicle market.
Even so, investors gave Tesla shares a lift this morning.
In the U.S., Ford said its vehicle sales in May rose 10.7 percent. Sales of the F-Series pickup truck line surged by nearly 43 percent.
Volvo Cars said its May sales rose by 31 percent.
Hyundai and Toyota last week reported strong U.S. sales, as reported by Automotive News.
Preliminary sales figures for May show that U.S. car and light truck sales achieved a 15.05 million annualized sales pace, according to Wards Intelligence. That’s well below pre-pandemic levels that bobbed around the 17 million level, but it’s not a recession.
Full second-quarter U.S. sales figures from all automakers won’t be released until July 3. But based on the first five months of the year, Detroit automakers are sticking with forecasts of relatively robust profits for 2023 – a point leaders of the UAW used last week to rally members to fight for big pay increases in contract talks this fall.
Granted, saying that there’s no recession in auto sales at a time of rising interest rates and geopolitical tension is like talking about a no-hitter in the seventh inning of a baseball game. But improved supplies of vehicles and healing supply chains appear to be coinciding with resilient demand. Fingers crossed.
Auto File: Shhh! Don’t say that 'R' word!
The auto recession is MIA: A gaggle of May sales reports from different regions and companies affirm that the slump in demand for new vehicles that at least some industry executives feared has not happened – so far.
GM Flint Assembly
General Motors said Monday it will invest $1 billion to re-tool assembly and metal stamping factories in Flint, Mich. to build the next generation of heavy-duty, combustion engine Chevy and GMC pickup trucks.
The Chevy Silverado HD and GMC Sierra HDs made in Flint do battle with Ford’s F-Series Super Duty trucks and Stellantis’ Ram heavy duty pickups for shares of one of the most lucrative segments of the global vehicle market. Heavy-duty pickups with luxury-car interiors and the grunt to haul an Airstream trailer up the Donner Pass sell for more than $100,000.
The North American heavy duty pickup segment will be one of the last to go electric (or hydrogen fuel cell powered) barring significant breakthroughs in battery energy density or hydrogen refueling.
All in, GM is investing $1.7 billion in Flint to support a new generation of heavy-duty pickups and combustion V-8 engines – a sum that should ensure these vehicles spin profits well into the next decade.
Shorter term, the investments could help GM in tough bargaining with the UAW this fall. Flint is effectively the birthplace of the UAW. The union and GM have clashed often over the company’s decisions to slash employment in the city during the 1980s and 1990s.
The UAW may not be so easily appeased. The union on Monday put out a video from President Shawn Fain blasting GM for gutting employment at a semiconductor factory in Kokomo, Ind., Fain’s hometown.
"This work will really never stop," GM CEO Mary Barra said. "We will continue to optimize."
General Motors CEO Mary Barra is not backing down on her bet that the automaker’s Cruise robo-taxi operation and its autonomous driving technology will be a $50 billion a year business by 2030 – notwithstanding the $2 billion a year pace at which it loses money now.
Barra told attendees at a Sanford Bernstein conference that Cruise and self-driving vehicle technology are a “giant growth opportunity.” She also predicted personally-owned autonomous vehicles could be a reality before the end of the decade – a view she shares with Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Barra’s determination on self-driving vehicles runs counter to the judgments by rivals, including Ford and Volkswagen, and much of the investor community that self-driving vehicles will not be profitable or widely accepted by the public for many years to come.
In the absence of national standards in the U.S., the environment for free-range robotaxis and autonomous semis depends on location. In San Francisco, where Cruise and Alphabet Inc’s Waymo have robotaxi fleets, city officials want to put a lid on new robo-taxi deployments.
In Arizona and Texas, Barra said, there is “a much more welcoming regulatory environment.”
Joe White is the global automotive industry correspondent for Reuters.
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