U.S. Vehicle Inventories Exceptionally Lean Going Into Fall

Not that it should be any surprise with pricing creeping up, but U.S. vehicle inventories are some of the lowest we’ve seen in roughly a decade. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to get a solid estimate on supplies as many automakers no longer have the balls to conduct monthly reports, at least not any they’re willing to share. The few that still do have been a little light on the lot, however.

Going into fall, we’d expect to see supplies around the 60-day mark with about a quarter of those vehicles representing the upcoming model year. Mainstream brands seem to be running with a lot fewer cars this month. On Monday, Automotive News estimated that September was probably representing the lightest industry-wide supply of vehicles since October of 2011. Meanwhile, Cox Automotive has the industry sitting on 56 days worth of cars — noting that national inventories shrank to 2.26 million vehicles, or about 870,000 fewer from the year before.

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  • 3-On-The-Tree In my life before the military I was a firefighter EMT and for the majority of the car accidents that we responded to ALCOHOL and drugs was the main factor. All the suggested limitations from everyone above don’t matter if there is a drunken/high fool behind the wheel. Again personal responsibility.
  • Wjtinfwb NONE. Vehicle tech is not the issue. What is the issue is we give a drivers license to any moron who can fog a mirror. Then don't even enforce that requirement or the requirement to have auto insurance is you have a car. The only tech I could get behind is to override the lighting controls so that headlights and taillights automatically come on at dusk and in sync with wipers. I see way too many cars after dark without headlights, likely due to the automatic control being overridden and turned to "Off". The current trend of digital or electro-luminescent dashboards exacerbates this as the dash is illuminated, fooling a driver into thinking the headlights are on.
  • Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh given the increasing number of useless human scumbags who use their phones while driving (when it is not LIFE AND DEATH EMERGENCY) there has to be a trade off.It is either this, or make phone use during driving a moving violation that can suspend a license.
  • Wjtinfwb Great. Another Solyndra boondoggle wasting the tax dollars we contribute and further digging us into debt. The saying, "don't listen to what they say, watch what they do" has never been more accurate. All this BS talk about "preserving Democracy" and "level playing fields" are just words. The actions say, "we don't give a damn about democracy, we want to pick the winners and use the taxpayer revenue to do it". 100 million is chump change in auto development and manufacturing and doling that out in 300k increments is just a colossal waste. Nothing happens in a large manufacturing enterprise for 300k., it's a rounding error. A symbolic gesture. Ford and GM likely spend 300k designing a new logo for the 12V battery that runs your radio. For EV development it's a fart in a Hurricane.
  • Bd2 Let's Go Brandon!