Haig Stoddard, Principal Forecaster, Forecast & Analytics, Wards Intelligence presents the September 2021 North America Barometer will review the current sales and production outlooks for the rest of 2021 and Q1-2022, as well as summarize the impact on sales and production still being caused by ongoing supply chain disruptions, spurred mostly by the global shortage of microchips. The presentation also will dwell deeper into answering questions related to the timing of when the industry can get production and inventory in sync with strong demand; what is driving rising sales and how long growth can last; and how well each major manufacturer is handling the supply-chain disruptions.

The revised North America production outlook for entire-2021 is roughly 2 million units below expectations for the period at the beginning of the year.

Inventory levels are expected to begin rising in September, but not enough to create much optimism for sales during the remainder of 2021, and the uncertainty related to supply-chain disruptions is creating more downside than upside to an already-weak outlook.

August’s annualized rate was tracking about one million units higher until the inventory-drain worsened enough that sales nosedived at the end of the month, which does not bode well for the upcoming Labor Day weekend (as well as entire-September), when the market usually gets a boost from holiday deals and promotions.

U.S. light-vehicle sales in the final four months of 2021 need only to record a tepid 15.5-million-unit annualized rate to meet the revised calendar-year forecast of 16.0 million units.

The impact of huge production losses on vehicle availability has been dragging down North America sales volumes over the past three months, and results are not likely to start improving until at least September.