You know what’s great about Twitter? Not much these days, and yet I spend all my time there. (Editor’s Note: That’s a choice, Matt. Elon buying the platform and making me use it far less was the best thing that’s ever happened to my mental health. -PG) To make matters worse, an entire industry has cropped up there full of people whose job it is to take small amounts of data and make these huge prognostications about the car market. I’m going to address the most egregious version of this now and dash everyone’s hopes for suddenly cheaper cars.
Also, hey, let’s look at what’s going on at Aston Martin, Tesla, and Daimler. Happy Friday from lovely Chicago, Illinois.
Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Believe Random People Tweeting About The Car Market On Twitter
I am a (semi) random person on the internet so, you know, take everything I say with a grain of salt as well. The car market has been somewhat unpredictable lately and we’re dealing with numerous conflicting signals on the macroeconomic level. What will happen? Who knows.
The best I can say is, yeah, this probably isn’t happening anytime soon:
Car prices are about to drop, an oversupply of vehicles will lead to manufacturers slashing prices. There are too many cars and not enough buyers.
— Andrew Lokenauth (@FluentInFinance) June 27, 2023
UBS reports that the production of cars is outpacing sales by 6%, this leaves about 5 million cars just sitting around, unsold. To…
This tweet has been getting passed around and I think it’s based on some faulty assumptions and is, as often happens on that platform, extrapolating a small amount of data way too far. I’m not sure why this particular tweet took off, but it seems to create hope for diminishing prices in a way that I don’t think is warranted.
Let me be clear: new car prices for all models are not going to crater anytime soon. It’s unclear how much demand there is in the market, but there are at least enough car buyers to keep prices for much of the market pretty high for a while, depending on what you are buying. To be clear, I don’t think Mr. Lokenauth is entirely wrong, but the premise seems pretty far off and the data he’s drawing from I think doesn’t paint a clear picture.
First, there are not 5 million new cars just sitting around dealer lots. The best estimate comes from Cox Automotive, which shows the number is less than half, at about 1.96 million cars. This is a big improvement over the last two years but, historically, it’s still low. In May 2020, there were nearly 3 million new cars waiting to sell. What if you add in used cars? Depending on estimates there are 4.7 million new and used cars for sale. Again, not a historically large number, and used car prices are going up!
Second, this is a tweet in June and it’s using outdated info. The sources he cites are from early March and early April. It’s old, cherry-picked data trying to prove a point. He also misinterprets or misrepresents the data. According to The Telegraph story he links to, UBS isn’t saying there are 5 million cars sitting around, waiting to get sold, it says that automakers will overproduce by about 6%, which means about 5 million cars across the entire year will need to be marked down, and most of that will be later in the year.
Third, there’s a good reason for automakers to be producing more cars right now:
- The car market is still historically behind where it needs to be in terms of inventory.
- The summer selling season is important for automakers and they need cars on the lots.
- The big union contracts are coming up and some automakers want to build inventory ahead of potential strikes.
The only way for prices to dramatically drop across the board is for there to be a cratering of demand, which could happen if the economy collapses and we see a rise in unemployment OR vehicle financing gets difficult (or some mix of both). The lending environment is tough right now, but demand seems fine. Here’s what S&P Global Mobility thinks is happening this summer:
S&P Global Mobility projects new light vehicle sales volume in June 2023 to reach 1.38 million units, up 17% year over year, and representing the 11th consecutive month in which volume has improved from the year-prior level. This volume would translate to an estimated sales pace of 15.9 million units (seasonally adjusted annual rate: SAAR), pressing the 16.0-million-unit level for the second time in the quarter.
“For the second consecutive month, auto sales volumes will be supported by month-end holiday programs,” said Chris Hopson, principal analyst at S&P Global Mobility. “That automakers have the ability to offer holiday clearance incentives is a positive sign. It also indicates that some of the concerns regarding new vehicle affordability, low inventories, macroeconomic uncertainty, rising interest rates, and tighter credit conditions are not causing retrenchment by consumers still in the market for a new vehicle.”
Basically, all the headwinds in the car market aren’t yet causing enough people to sit on the sidelines to create a price war.
Will there be more incentives? Sure. But it’s going to depend a lot on what you want. In the market for a Jeep Renegade? Here come the incentives. There are now a ton more electric cars for sale, so there may be some movement there as well, plus Elon Musk’s price war is working. A new pickup truck or crossover? Maybe not. A cheap, affordable sedan? Start praying.
Right now automakers are contending with the aftershocks of supply chain issues and so their product mixes aren’t always right so, inevitably, there will be cars that are less popular with deals to be had.
Still, without some sort of massive economic downturn, I don’t think this is an accurate or particularly well-informed take. It seems like another random finance dude on Twitter trying to pump his newsletter subs by tweeting out a bunch of thin analysis. If you want real data from people who have subject area expertise, follow people like CarDealership Guy or Jessica Caldwell. Or just read The Autopian.
Tesla Probably Sold A Crapton Of Cars Last Quarter
You know where you can get a really good deal on a car? Your local Tesla store and/or ordering website.
Tesla (TSLA.O) is set to report record vehicle deliveries, after the top electric vehicle maker increased discounts and other incentives to boost sales in the face of economic uncertainty and rising competition.
Tesla is expected as early as this weekend to report global deliveries of 445,000 vehicles in April to June, according to the average estimates of nine analysts by Refinitiv. That would be an increase of 5% from 422,875 the preceding quarter.
That’s a lot of cars. What Elon Musk is doing here, actually, is quite smart. His product line is old, he has a ton of competition, he’s willing to take a potential hit to profits to protect his market share and keep Chinese competition at bay. He’s been building the same cars for so long that the production costs, theoretically, should be going down.
Aston Martin + Lucid (-Mercedes) Makes A Lot Of Sense
There’s an analyst in the supercar market who runs a gossipy site called Karenable that I think is supposed to be Car-Enabled, but I always read as Karen-Able. Or Karen-Enabled. I can forgive a little cattyness because I enjoy someone who digs into the financials. The premise of his most recent article is that the Mercedes-Aston Martin relationship isn’t working out the way many expected, and the Saudi Public Investment Fund (invested in both Lucid and Aston Martin) doesn’t know quite what to do with Lucid, and so Aston Martin + Lucid is a nice inevitability.
Remember, Aston Martin said it would switch to Mercedes-Benz engines for its future internal combustion needs, but that’s of little future consequence and the Formula 1 relationship seems to be faltering as well.
Back in Q3 2022, PIF invested an estimated £174 million in AML. Between the value of the shares that AML is issuing and the £104 million in cash payments, that AML will be giving to PIF controlled Lucid, PIF will be getting a very large amount of their initial AML investment back. To top it off, even after this PIF will still have a 18% shareholding in AML. Just to make things even a bit more interesting, Stroll’s privately owned AMF1 Team, counts the Saudi state oil company Amamco as its “Strategic Partner” and Saudi Airlines as a “Global Partner”. What these two are paying at AMF1 in sponsorship fees is unknown but rumored to be at least $30-40 million. The level of incest between all these related parties would make the old Habsburg Dynasty proud.
In many ways Lucid is the perfect partner for AML. Lucid missed their Q1 2023 numbers badly and burned through over $800 mil. in cash. Its stock price is also down 75% in the past year. Tying AML closer to PIF/Lucid also makes a lot of strategic sense for Stroll as it creates a second possible buyer to Geely now that Mercedes-Benz is clearly not interested
Chinese automaker Geely also has a big stake in both Daimler and Aston Martin. And Stroll, who seems a little cranky if you watch that Netflix show about angry Austrian dudes, isn’t dumb. Having multiple people who could buy his brand makes more sense than just one single partner.
Also, I’ve got a Lucid Air Grand Touring this week and the range is impressive. I’ve got some other gripes with the car, but the EV tech is sound and the charging is pretty fast.
Electrify America Will Install Tesla Stations
If you want more proof that Tesla’s NACS standard is the future of charging in North America, Volkswagen-owned Electrify America is going to offer Tesla charging in the near future.
From Bloomberg via Automotive News:
Electrify America becomes the latest large EV player to adopt the Tesla charging standard. Other charging networks that have also adopted NACS include ChargePoint Holdings Inc., Blink Charging Co., EVgo and Wallbox NV. Volkswagen said in a statement Thursday that it’s “currently evaluating the implementation” of Tesla’s technology.
This is one of the last big dominoes to fall. It’s not over for CCS, but it’s on life support.
The Big Flush
I’m in Chicago for the NASCAR race (come to our meetup tonight!) and I’m curious if anyone here planned on watching the first-ever NASCAR street race this weekend. Is anyone going?
You give him grief about cherry-picking data, then pick a month that is smack dab in the height of the pandemic when almost nobody was buying cars, yet there was still a lot of inventory because the effects on manufacturing hadn’t really been felt yet? Pot, meet Kettle.
If you don’t understand why he picked that date or it’s context this whole article is probably well over your head.
Word of advice: Condescension is almost always a bad look.
Meh, I’m not concerned about my looks. I’ve always been ugly.
That’s not really cherry-picking data. For example, in May 2019 it was 3.81 million new cars, which makes his point look even more egregious. I picked May 2020 to be somewhat fairer.
That’s super-useful context that would have been good to include in the article. 😉
Any stats from the pandemic era are a big red flag, but if it was actually better than a year before then fair play.
I’m rooting for Lucid… to lose as much money as possible. Screw the PIF.
Right, it’s not a submersible built with expired carbon fiber and no regard for safety.
You know when OceanGate bought that carbon fiber from Boeing for their vessel, it was all because of a misunderstanding of the term substandard material.
Well played, sir.
This is glorious.
COTD
So how does COTD work?
It’s not a coincidence that Electrify America waited until SAE got involved — SAE ownership of NACS makes NACS a proper open standard, which alleviates a TON of concerns.
I expect to see most CCS stations adopt NACS in short order. NACS uses DIN 70121 and ISO 15118 protocols instead of Tesla’s traditional CANbus, meaning it’s just CCS1 with a different plug shape, so anyone producing CCS chargers pretty much just needs to replace the plastic plug and call it a day. It also means I expect we’ll see cheap(ish) CCS/NACS and NACS/CCS adapters soon.
TL;DR: I’m way more optimistic about this situation than I was last week.
I’ve already seen a lot of CCS/NACS and NACS/CCS adapters for around $80 at that big Brazilian river site. Perhaps they will get even cheaper? Or demand will go thru the roof.
I think at that price, you’re likely seeing just the L2 adapter, not the full CCS one.
Is Elon Musk actually making these decisions at Tesla? I know he’s the face of the company but surely an actual savvy business person is in charge of marketing decisions, right?
Making the decisions solely? Definitely not. Involved, and calls a lot of shots? Yeah probably.
Demand goes down and Musk lowers prices, what a genius move! He has set the bar so low with his usual bullshit that people call him smart when he does something normal.
At some point in the past, it was reported that Harley-Davidson made more money by licensing its brand and logo to merchandise manufacturers than it made by producing and selling motorcycles. I found that fact highly believable.
Same will happen to Tesla. Producing cars is difficult and expensive. Selling licenses to produce electrical connectors for car manufacturers and charging station companies has almost zero overhead and is therefore almost pure profit.
Recall that they sold a crapton of CAFE credits too.
I don’t think they can sell licenses for this. They opened their charging specs a while back IIRC, so everyone has been able to build Tesla-style chargers if they want. It just took them until now to decide they do want.
Sorry Tesla didnt build a charging network for their competition to use for free. Koney for electrons your fuel isnt free.
Lucid needs to be bought by Toyota, and Toyota needs to buy lucid. Toyota provides stable funding, name recognition and brand reliability. Lucid has probably the most interesting EV package offer and a nearly all time low market value.
Canoo would also be another good buy for a legacy automaker. They seem to have a decent product (delivery van) but appear to have run out of money to start production.
Their lifestyle vehicle is odd, but could be seen as an electric minivan.
I keep hoping someone buys them so that their pickup can come to market, though I’d be happy with the van if necessary.
WHAT?
I don’t think that car sales over the next year or so are going to be driven by demand or vehicle availability so much as people’s ability to afford the loans.
“In June 2023, automotive site Edmunds.com listed the average car loan interest rate for May as 7.1% APR for new car loans and 11% APR for used car loans. Data company Cox Automotive gave the volume-weighted average rate as 8.91% for new cars and 13.50% for used cars as of 6/10/23.”
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/average-car-loan-interest-rates-by-credit-score
“The average transaction price (ATP) of a new vehicle in the U.S. increased in May 2023 to $48,528, a month-over-month increase of 0.5% ($251) from an upwardly revised April reading of $48,277.“
https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/kbb-atp-may-2023/
…
Using the average transaction price and volume-weighted APR% and an 84 month loan, I am coming up with a rough figure of $778 a month in payments.
Naturally a figure based on averages like this is meaningless because no one is perfectly average…but it sure gives you something to think about.
Even if car prices WERE to go down, it would only be by a few thousand dollars maximum; not enough to alter the payments very much – even a drop of $5,000 would still put the monthly payment at $698 a month…for 84 months.
I’m glad there is a march towards a charging standard, and Tesla Superchargers seem to be (I’ve never used them) the best charging option. But I wish they weren’t connected to Elon Musk; that guy is terrible.
Connecting a charger to Elon Musk might not be terrible. It depends on how it is done and for how long.
I’m also very unhappy about this news. As someone that vowed not to support Elon, that will likely mean I cannot buy any EV at a certain point.
Ah yes, because handing money every week at the gas pump to *checks notes* Saudi sheikhs, Venezuelan autocrats, and the ghouls running Western oil majors is definitely a better option.
Right? Elon Musk is poo but even HE doesn’t have 2 centuries of human misery and death on his hands.
True but we see here plaudits everyday ” Look for the slave labour label” China. Noone denies it they ignore it and demand US Auto manufacturers not only use over priced union labor but keep unnecessary union labor employed and ever increasing labor rates. I get liberal writers support a union but at least justify supporting slave labor and expecting a way to compete?
Have you seen the labor conditions at Twitter and Tesla?
SAE making NACS an open standard should alleviate that concern. Just avoid Tesla and Supercharger stations.
I promise you you regularly support a lot of people more unsavory than Elon Musk. Figure out a smarter vow.
I fully expect the move to NACS to introduce a lot of the same problems we’ve seen with CCS. A wider variety of hardware and software means compatibility may suffer, plus rapid expansion by a number of charging station companies means we’ll likely see the same maintenance issues pop back up.
Good points. This won’t fix the faulty chargers, and compatibility could open a new can of worms.
The only way I see car prices dropping significantly this year is if the economy tanks when student loan repayments begin again. Otherwise, we are probably still looking at 6-12 more months for a pre-2019 car to be worth what it was in Q1 2020.
40.5 million borrowers will be putting , on average, $390/mo towards student loan payments once payments resume (which I think is in September).
That’s going to have some measurable impact. That was $390/mo going somewhere else, even if for some people it was into a savings account.
Interest starts in september payments start in october. It is a shame i keep seeing stories how these former students are going to have to cancel foreign vacations, not buy $600,000 houses, have to accept jobs that they think they are too good for, poor poor millenials.
FFS maybe turn off OAN once in a while
If bad take dave does that how will he know what to think? His brain is far to small for any original thought.
My wife texts me this morning “Hey did you know there’s a big NASCAR race in downtown Chicago this weekend? That would be awesome to see!”
So today’s marital advice: Communication is key. Always let your significant other know about the racing schedule well ahead of time. You never know when they might suddenly become interested.
Can confirm. My wife went from totally oblivious to aware and moderately interested in F1 thanks to the Las Vegas GP.
Yeah, the used car market is still nuts when the more savvy shoppers have to crunch the numbers to compare the asking price of a 1-3 year old used car vs. the MSRP of its current model year equivalent (before dealer markups) to make sure they won’t end up paying more for the used version.
“I’m curious if anyone here planned on watching the first-ever NASCAR street race this weekend.”
I hadn’t really given it much thought, but you’ve piqued my curiosity, and NBC is an over the air channel, so probably I will watch (at least some of) it.
Never was a fan of the oval stuff, but used to watch the NASCAR road races as a kid. Will probably find a way to tune in.
I’m in (near) Chicago, but I’m not looking forward to the race. It feels like a final “fuck you” from the last mayor.
Patrick speaks wise words. The greatest thing I ever did in the past month was delete both Facebook and Twitter from my phone. I often go days without checking them on my desktop, and when I do, I get disgusted in under five minutes and close them. I knew I was spending too much time on them and wanted to get off. What really helped is also reading The Chaos Machine at the same time.
I permanently deleted my FB account and I’ve deleted Instagram off my phone (I never had Twitter). As soon as you open your eyes to how people treat each other online, and realize how you were caught up in it, it feels really gross to participate. I’ve checked insta once on my laptop in the few months since I deleted the app. Really thought I’d miss it, but no.
I’m very, very close to deleting Instagram. Similar to Facebook, what was once a nice way to keep tabs on your friends and local businesses, it’s become a time-wasting cesspool of the very worst people on the internet.
This is my social media now, lol.
Seriously. I gave up on Twitter as soon as Elon slammed the door on 3rd-party apps (no chronological order view=no Twitter). Besides, I was only using it for a few mins a day so it was a nothing for me to stop using it…
Yeah, “tech withdrawal” was a joke to me until a f-ing month went by after deleting Twitter from my phone but I still felt like I had to consciously resist going to that stupid website. I had no idea how toxic it was until two of my young kids each told me how I’m happy again.
Outrage addiction is real and it’s poison to your mind. Cut it off.
Well, a few years back, there were more cars available, but a lower percentage were Jeep Renegades. If the Renegade continues to make up ever-higher percentages of available vehicles, I estimate the only available vehicles in 2026 will be Jeep Renegades!
If we extrapolate broadly from limited data, we can make all sorts of predictions.
I only login to Twitter when there’s a major internet outage since it’s usually more up-to-date than the status page of whatever platform is experiencing the outage. I never bother with Twitter otherwise.
I usually end up just googling it. Places like DownDetector are usually pretty solid for major services without having to bother with random social posts.
Pretty sure he mention awhile back it’s Karen-a-ble named after his wife.
He’s not dumb, just an asshole.
Why not both?
My bet’s on both.
Street course sounds like a lot of fun. Enjoy Autopians!
You mean there aren’t warehouses chock full of dusty 20-year-old Explorers and other generations-old unsold SUVs like so many “partner link” ads are always telling me around the World Wide Web?
There are too… and every one of those Explorers has a lonely housewife, dying to meet you sitting in it!
She doesn’t want to remarry. She only wants s…avings on a 2008 Dodge Durango!
And one small trick that can save you hundreds of dollars.
Doctors don’t want you to know this one easy trick!
One small truck that can save you 100s
I was going to go to the NASCAR race in Chicago, but the pricing of general admission tickets are fucking outrageously expensive. Also, I have ZERO faith in anything the PIF owns.
But 6-packs of Busch Light are only $65 when you get in…
I suspect car-pricing people are mostly engaging in wishful thinking. Just because prices have increased doesn’t automatically make them unsustainable.
Much the same can be said about housing; lots of people loudly proclaiming (wishing) prices can’t possibly remain this high, and yet they almost surely will, vagaries of certain local markets aside.
As long as the banks are happy to write >72 month loans and people are happy to take them at >5% apr, prices will continue to increase.
I predict both will continue to be true.
With new cars being universally reliable and resale values being high, there is less risk in taking out a longer loan.
“With new cars being universally reliable and resale values being high”
*laughs in Alfa Romeo*
I looked at Ford’s website the other day, and their default finance assumption is 84 months. 84! Yeeesh. I know that’s just there to bring the theoretical monthly payment lower and hoping people won’t read the fine print, but still. Geez.
{ sending good thoughts into the ether to MANIFEST REASONABLY PRICED, GENTLY USED CAYENNES and STEF GETTING A JOB }
Both of those things are probably unrealistic wish-list items, but hey, at least I’m honest about that fact.
If I watch the race (50% chance of rain Sunday, so *shrug*), I will do it as Big Bill France intended: on a television set, far far away from Grant Park, so that I may enjoy how awesome the city looks on TV.
Have a great meetup! I wish I could be there.
Given the context, I assume we are adding in used cars. Unless the previous uses of “new” were the mistake, but I don’t think they are.
Oops, thanks