DETROIT — New car sales in the United States rose nearly 5% from January to March of this year, as buyers stayed in the market despite high interest rates. However, growth in electric vehicle sales slowed in the first three months of 2024 as conventional buyers remain wary of limited range and lack of charging stations.
The automakers, most of which released their U.S. sales figures on Tuesday, sold nearly 3.8 million vehicles in the first quarter, for an annual rate of 15.4 million units.
With agency inventories close to reaching pre-pandemic levels, auto companies have been forced to reduce prices. The JD Power company indicated that the average sales price during March was $44,186, 3.6% less than a year ago and the largest decline on record for the month of March.
The company noted that automakers’ discounts during March were around 66% higher than a year ago, that is, about $2,800. That includes increased availability of leasing deals. JD Power expects leasing to account for nearly a quarter of retail sales last month, up from 19.6% in March 2023.
Electric vehicle sales rose just 2.7% to just over 268,000 units in that quarter, well below the 47% growth that fueled record sales and accounted for 7.6% of the market last year. The slowdown, led by Tesla, confirms automakers’ fears that they moved too quickly in their ambitions to go after electric vehicle buyers.
Sales of electric vehicles represented 7.1% of the US market in the period from January to March of this year.
Almost everyone who originally leaned toward electric vehicles and people who are concerned about the impact of internal combustion engines on the planet have already purchased an electric vehicle, and now car companies are facing more buyers. skeptics, said Ivan Drury, chief information officer at Edmunds.
“That’s where all the obstacles we’ve seen in the polling data come from,” Drury said. “Those real-world concerns about charging infrastructure, battery life, insurance costs.”
Source: With information from AP
