sales

Biden aims to juice EV sales, but would his plan work?

By Betty C. Morrow 2 weeks ago

DETROIT — Dangling tax credits and rebates in his drive to fight climate change, President Joe Biden wants you to trade your gas-burning car, truck or SUV for a zero-emissions electric vehicle.

Some buyers would find his offer persuasive. Yet Biden’s goal is a daunting one: Even if Congress approves his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, along with its incentives, it would take many years to replace enough internal combustion vehicles with EVs to make a huge dent in tailpipe emissions.

Right now, there are about 279 million vehicles on the road in the United States. The proportion that are fully electric, according to IHS Markit, is 0.36%. Of the 14.5 million new vehicles that were sold last year, 2% were fully electric.

Even if every new vehicle sold were battery powered — something no one envisions — it would take about 15 years to swap out the entire fleet.

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US Car Sales Shift Into High Gear In Q1

By Betty C. Morrow 2 weeks ago

The car buying craze is on. According to recent reports, consumers are snapping up new vehicles at pre-pandemic levels, as a  massive case of FOMO (fear of missing out) seems to be sweeping the entire commerce landscape.

Auto sales were up 8 percent in Q1, as vaccines continued to circulate and consumer confidence in an eventual return to normal began to tick up, leading to vehicle shortages that have only accelerated the buying binge, according to Bloomberg reports. According to researcher J.D. Power, retail deliveries are forecast to have reached 3.16 million vehicles during Q1, the second-highest total on record.

“There’s a little FOMO going on here, fear of missing out,” said Jeff Schuster, president of the Americas and global vehicle forecasting at researcher LMC Automotive. “Consumers have sacrificed on choice because the color combination or option combination they wanted wasn’t available,

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Tesla is slowly losing its electric-vehicle crown as Ford’s Mustang Mach-E cuts into sales

By Betty C. Morrow 1 month ago
Mustang Mach E GT Performance Edition 03

Mustang Mach-E GT Performance Edition. Ford

  • Tesla’s share of the US electric-car market fell from 81% to 69% in February.

  • The Mustang Mach-E was nearly the sole reason for Tesla’s market-share losses.

  • Ford’s new electric car has been widely successful, winning awards and Wall Street’s approval.

  • Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.

Ford’s electric Mustang Mach-E appears to be cutting into Tesla’s comfortable lead in the electric-vehicle market right out of the gate.

While Ford sold only 3,739 of the new SUVs in February, Tesla’s share of the US electric-car market fell to 69% in the same month, down from 81% in the prior year, a Morgan Stanley report found. What’s more, the Mustang accounted for nearly all of Tesla’s market-share losses, the bank said.

Despite the new competition – of which Ford is far from the only source – Morgan Stanley’s analysis found that

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Monthly car payments near $600 as SUV and truck sales surge: Experian

By Betty C. Morrow 1 month ago

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The average monthly car loan payments are on the rise, surging upwards of $600, as an increasing number of consumers switch back to financing new vehicles, according to Experian’s latest auto financing report.

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During the last three months of the 2020 fiscal year, consumers borrowed almost $2,000 more for new vehicles, spending on average $35,228, according to Experian’s State of the Automotive Finance Market report.

This pushed their monthly bill from about $13 to upwards of $576 during that period, according to Experian.

“The events of 2020 disrupted the automotive industry and we’ve seen some consumers shift away from patterns that have been cemented over previous quarters such as opting for used vehicles,” Experian senior director of automotive financial solutions Melinda Zabritski, said.

This change can be attributed

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