Retail car sales in the US appear to fall sharply in August

Retail car sales in the US appear to fall sharply in August. The continuing shortage of chips, together with the rapidly spreading delta variant of the new coronavirus, is limiting the stock of cars in stores. This was pointed out by the administration of the consulting companies J. D. Power and LMC Automotive. According to a report released on Thursday, retail sales of new cars in the US should fall by 14.3% year on year to 987,100 vehicles in August. The reason is the limited production of several cars due to the persistent shortage of chips, although interest in passenger transport is growing during the corona crisis. Dealers currently have about 942,000 vehicles in stock, while two years ago, before the corona crisis began, there were about 3 million cars. According to Jeff Schuster of LMC Automotive, "global demand for light vehicles remains under pressure. The stocks of retailers are far from being able to cover the high interest of customers, which is due to the lack of semiconductors, as well as production outages due to the spread of the delta variant of the new coronavirus. Thomas King from the data and analysis division of J. D. Power added that the result of the current situation is a limited pace of retail sales and, on the other hand, an increase in prices. Analysts expect average transaction prices to rise 16% to 35,164 euros. According to a report by consulting firms, the current stock situation will not change much in September either. Due to limited production, the consulting companies have worsened the forecast for global sales of light vehicles this year by 2 million. They anticipate that in 2021, 83.8 million cars will be sold worldwide.