The global chip shortage continued to hammer automakers last month, with Hyundai and Kia reporting lower U.S. sales in September for the second straight month.
Volume dropped 1.8 percent at Hyundai and 4.7 percent at Kia, though both automakers racked up overall gains for the third quarter behind strong July deliveries.
Hyundai said retail sales slipped 5 percent to 49,439 last month as a result of what Randy Parker, head of sales, called a “challenging inventory environment.” Genesis posted a 332 percent increase in Sept. volume, with sales of the GV70 and GV80 crossovers each outpacing combined deliveries of the brand’s three sedans.
Most other automakers will report September and third-quarter sales later Friday. Ford Motor Co. will release results on Monday, followed by Daimler later in the week.
U.S. sales are forecasts to fall about 25 percent in September, based on estimates from J.D. Power, LMC Automotive, TrueCar and Cox Automotive, capping a quarter that will see industry volume drop 13 percent to 14 percent.
Ony three automakers — Toyota, Hyundai and Kia — are forecast to post higher third-quarter results, according to estimates from TrueCar and Edmunds.
Tight microchip stockpiles, combined with other supply chain disruptions, are undermining the industry’s recovery from the pandemic. Severe weather and flooding that struck the Gulf Coast and eastern seaboard also put a dent in volume last month, analysts said.
Some dealers have run out of new vehicles to sell multiple times over the last several months.
The average number of days a new vehicle sat on a dealer lot before being sold was on pace to fall to a record low of 23 days in September, down from 54 days a year ago and down two days from August 2021, J.D. Power said. Kia said it sold 77 percent of available inventory last month.
J.D. Power estimates retail inventories available at dealers dropped by another 22,000 units to 920,000 in September from 942,000 in August. Cox Automotive says there were 1.4 million fewer new vehicles in inventory last month compared to September 2020, and 2.5 million fewer vehicles than in September 2019.
The bottlenecks throughout the production pipeline that have depleted new car and light-truck supplies continue to upend the retail landscape.
Some buyers are balking at higher transaction prices and limited choices and deciding to wait on the sidelines until inventory improves.
Toyota Motor Corp. is on pace to outsell General Motors, the industry’s top U.S. seller for decades, for the second straight quarter. Nissan dealers order the redesigned Frontier pickup in one color and receive a shipment of two trucks in different colors. In Thomaston, Maine, the local Ford dealer, short on new-vehicle inventory, sold a used Chevrolet Corvette late last month out of the new-car showroom.
