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Those who follow the automotive industry will have undoubtedly noticed that dealer inventories are slowly approaching levels that would have been considered normal before the pandemic. While this is presumably good news for people who have absolutely had it with dealerships marking up their products, some are growing concerned by how much electric vehicle inventories are outpacing their gasoline-reliant counterparts.

Despite elevated fuel prices, aggressive marketing, and most companies vowing to transition toward building electrified automobiles exclusively, America has an EV supply of more than 100 days on dealer lots. That’s about double the average for gasoline vehicles. While it would seem that people are losing interest in battery-driven automobiles, industry experts are claiming that all is not as it seems.

With dealer lots starting to fill back up with product after years of lean inventories that encouraged salespeople to ask for absolutely ludicrous prices, the Federal Reserve has found that lenders are declining would-be borrowers at a record-setting pace. 

The reasons for this are many. Annual percentage rates have come up, requiring consumers to pay more money over time that lenders just aren’t certain they’ll see a return on. More people are also defaulting on loans across the board and inflationary pressures are poised to make the issue worse since the dollar just doesn’t go as far as it used to.  

With the rate of fatal automotive accidents having spiked dramatically in recent years, just about everyone has been theorizing why. While there still seems to be a level of willful ignorance surrounding how modern infotainment systems and driving aids create more opportunities to be distracted behind the wheel, most outlets tracking safety seem to have come to the realization that size disparities between vehicles play an important factor in crash survivability.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently published a list of the models with the highest death rate per million vehicles registered. Its takeaway seems to be that the uptick in fatalities could be attributed to smaller vehicles and powerful models that encourage aggressive driving.

A new study from the American Automobile Association (AAA) has suggested that raising vehicle speed limits offers negligible benefits to drivers while decreasing overall safety for all travelers.

“Our study analyzed before-and-after data on a dozen roadways that raised or lowered posted speed limits and found no one-size-fits-all answer regarding the impact of these changes,” said Dr. David Yang, president and executive director of the AAA Foundation. “However, it is critical to consider the safety implications when local transportation authorities contemplate making changes with posted speed limits.”

J.D. Power has released its Initial Quality Study for 2023 and the big takeaway seems to be that the automotive industry continues to fumble. While manufacturers are bending over backward to implement novel technologies and features, last year’s survey revealed that customers felt vehicular quality reached its lowest level in more than three decades.

It’s even worse this year.

Delinquencies on automotive loans have surpassed the recession-era highs witnessed in 2009, according to an assessment released by S&P Global Mobility on Monday. Fortunately the wealthy will be largely unaffected by this trend, as the issue is isolated primarily to subprime borrowers. For some strange reason, people with more money are having less trouble paying their bills on time. 

Lucid Group’s report for the first quarter of 2023 was off the mark, with the automaker suffering a $780-million net loss. While any burgeoning carmaker should expect to burn through cash for a while, electric-vehicle firms seem broadly dedicated to the practice. Many EV startups have floundered and some have even bordered on shell games, promising things they shouldn’t in the hopes to draw in more investment capital. However, Lucid has seemed committed to delivering enviable products — making the financial report genuinely disappointing. 

The number of U.S. vehicle owners who are more than 59 days behind in their auto loan payments was 26.7 percent higher at the end of 2022 than they were at the end of 2021. This is due to a myriad of factors. Car payments have gotten larger, loan terms have increased, inflation has devalued the currency, and subprime borrowers are finding themselves on the wrong end of a widening wealth gap. 

While automotive repossessions declined during the pandemic, mainly due to lenders offering amnesty periods, they’ve likewise spiked through the end of 2022. This trend is assumed to continue, setting up a lot of business for repo men. However, Ford Motor Co. has patented a system that would effectively make vehicles unresponsive to drivers that have missed a few payments. Meanwhile, automobiles boasting the latest advanced driving technologies could allegedly repossess themselves. 

The average monthly payment for a new car sold within the United States has reached a record $777, according to Kelley Blue Book’s parent Cox Automotive. That represents roughly one-sixth of the median household income and is about twice the price of what would have been considered average in 2019. How the hell has it managed to come to this?

A Michigan-based think tank has claimed that it now costs less to drive an internal combustion vehicle 100 miles than to charge up a comparably all-electric vehicle using home charging. Though this claim comes with a few caveats, starting with acknowledging that this only applies to “midpriced” vehicles based on the national average for fuel and electricity rates.

The United States is in the midst of expanding its electric vehicle charging network to ensure there’s sufficient charging capacity for the planned deluge of EV sales. Companies are even getting government money earmarked within the so-called Inflation Reduction Act to ensure that the Biden administration’s lofty environmental goals are maintained. However, a recent report by S&P Global Mobility has suggested the U.S. is nowhere near on pace to meet projected EV demand. 

Wholesale used-vehicle prices continued to climb during the last weeks of 2022, though the overall trend actually had secondhand valuations down by 15 percent for the entire year. That’s due largely to auction prices cooling off after the summer ended and the situation has many speculating that 2023 could be the first year we see massively inflated car prices begin to return to normal.

While market analysts are projecting that fuel costs will be slightly lower in 2023 than they were last year, GasBuddy has released a report suggesting that the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded could still be as much as $4.00 by May.

Driver assistance features have started to lose their luster now that they’re starting to become mainstream. Studies have shown that they’re often less reliable than one would expect and are being implemented in a manner that may not be appealing to motorists. In an effort to tackle this problem, Consumer Reports has released detailed guidelines to car manufacturers it believes will make people more willing to engage with advanced driver assist systems (ADAS).

Automotive executives are reportedly scaling back their expectations for EV adoption, according to an annual survey conducted by KPMG International. Last year, professionals working at the top of the industry reported that they believed (on average) that over half of all new vehicles sold in the United States by 2030 would be battery-electric. But their faith in electrification appears to be evaporating, with most respondents suggesting that particular goal is no longer achievable.