April 29, 2022—U.S new vehicle sales for April 2022 are projected to reach around 1.2 million units. This includes retail and non-retail transactions, and overall is a 21.5 percent decrease from last year.
According to Reuters, this significant drop is due to low inventory and rising interest rates that cause prices to rise during a time of high demand.
Even though demand is still a consistent force, there are fewer than 900,000 units of inventory available at dealerships. Additionally, the automotive industry in general continues to suffer from supply chain issues.
Cox Automotive says that April sales volumes may fall 1.7 percent in total from March. Cox does not anticipate these numbers improving much throughout the rest of 2022.
Cox also expects that interest rates for loans in April could increase 33 points from a year ago, landing them at 4.61 percent and making these rates a contributing factor to price hikes.
"We expect production volumes to improve in the second half of the year, but fulfilling existing orders may not allow dealer inventory to accumulate in any noticeable way," Cox Automotive Senior Economist Charlie Chesbrough said in a statement, according to Reuters.
