The Auto Market Brief, powered by Cox Automotive, breaks down the latest trends and forecasts shaping the automotive industry. The show is hosted by Cox Automotive Executive Analyst Erin Keating, coupling years of experience translating data and trends with the data and industry insights of the largest automotive services and technology provider.
Joined by other Cox Automotive experts and outside guests, you’ll get data-driven insights and industry outlooks from some of the industry’s leading voices.
Welcome to The Auto Market Brief from Cox Automotive. Each episode, our experts and special guests break down the latest trends, insights, and news shaping the automotive market. We'll give you the information that truly matters so you can make smarter decisions and drive your business forward. Hello, and welcome back to the Auto Market Brief. I'm Erin Keating, your host and executive analyst here at Cox Automotive.
Erin Keating:And as usual, I am joined by our chief economist Jeremy Robb Jeremy, good to see you.
Jeremy Robb:Good afternoon. Good to see you too.
Erin Keating:Yeah. I think we've both been traveling quite a bit. You had a big week last week out in California. Is that right?
Jeremy Robb:Yes. I had an awesome week. It's probably the biggest week of the year for Manheim's clients at our client advisory board. I got to spend a lot of time with a lot of our biggest clients and do some fun stuff too, and it was really great. But then we were all exhausted.
Erin Keating:Yeah. I bet. And then we we just talking about how we had a nice rainy weekend. So good time to catch up on some sleep and some rest. Well, as usual, we've got plenty going on in the world.
Erin Keating:A couple of different data points that have dropped this week that I know you wanna take us through, and then I will work us through some industry announcements. We've got Stellantis had an investor day last week, so that was kind of a big talk of the town and a couple of things that are happening with our highway transportation bills. Everyone calls it a little bit more formalized. I'll go through some of those things. But first, I know we wanna get through some interest rates and inflation discussions.
Erin Keating:I know we've got some spending trends that we wanna take a look at. So I'm gonna flip it over to you to help us understand what's going on from a macro perspective. So let's start at interest rates and inflation. What are we expecting over the next year or so?
Jeremy Robb:Sure. You know well, most people do interest rates and inflation and how inflation is running are very closely tied to each other. And over the last couple of weeks, we've started to see some heightened volatility in our treasury bond market overall. We had the ten year that rose up to a little bit over 4.6%. I didn't stay there for too long, but it came back down.
Jeremy Robb:Right now, it's just right under 4.5%, but it hadn't been there in a really long time. And then also the thirty year note actually rose over 5.1% around the same time a week or two ago. And that has not happened since, wrote this down, 2007. So quite some time. Yeah.
Jeremy Robb:And why did that happen? Well, you know, and I think you and I may have talked about it a few weeks ago, but the PPI report, producer price inflation, we got that report a few weeks ago, and it was pretty hot. And it showed a lot of increases in prices related to energy increases. You know, when that impacts consumer inflation, it trickles into consumer inflation for quite some time, too. And I think, like a lot of people, are resetting their expectations of how long higher inflationary trends are going to come through our economy as it relates to the Middle East conflict keeping gas prices higher.
Jeremy Robb:And that's kind of just trickled into the bond market. And then I think it's really also why, like from last weekend and over this past weekend, we've seen more comments out of the administration in terms of trying to get this conflict taken care of. Right. Because whether they say it or not, I believe they are really paying attention to the financial markets. And the bond market is a really, really important market out there.
Erin Keating:Well, if I remember correctly, I mean, that's a lot of people talk about the Fed fund rate. But when we're thinking about auto loan interest rates and mortgage interest rates and things like this, those are a lot more directional based on what's happening in the bond market, no?
Jeremy Robb:Yeah, that's right. The market rate is set by the market, buying and selling supply demand, all those kind of things. A lot of lenders are borrowing money every day through different instruments and mechanisms in order to go and fund contracts that consumers, they are lending back through those channels. And so a lot of the pricing is based on some type of benchmark rate, maybe where the five year is, maybe where the ten year treasury is, and things like that. So as those prices ebb and flow, you can get variability in terms of what you're willing to pass along to the consumer overall too.
Erin Keating:Gotcha. So consumer spending trends, I mean, how are how are we seeing? Because we know that inflation is definitely an issue, but yet are we seeing that really reflected in consumer spending trends?
Jeremy Robb:Yeah. So that I'd say exactly why I wanted to talk about this a little bit. Consumer spending has been showing a pretty positive trend so far this year. Pretty much any way that you cut it, a lot of that was driven by the high tax refunds that we saw. But you know, then higher energy prices eat into that a little bit.
Jeremy Robb:Our weekly reads that we get using year over year spending trends show that they were still positive, but had started to trend down towards late April and early May. They picked back up a little bit over the last couple of weeks, but I did a little digging into it. And the last three weeks in a row, the trends within the overall macro trend show that gasoline stations are reporting growth of 25% year over year. Wow. And so not an insignificant component of the overall you think about the composition and the contribution factors of those, but clearly driving a lot of the increased spending that we're seeing, which means it's draining a lot of the spending in other places too.
Jeremy Robb:And just another thing that we have to follow and really take into account when we see trends and where things are going. Because I don't wanna be too Debbie Downer, but I did worry about that a little bit. Yeah. You know, how much more the consumer can take of these really high gas prices. Because everywhere you go, everywhere you look, every person I talk to, it is like one of the most important things that that everyone mentions.
Erin Keating:Right. Most visible too. I think that's like, the part of their challenge is that in their psyche, they're seeing it. So therefore, it's, like, very real and very big. And it is not to say that gas prices aren't high, but it's it's almost like, oh gosh.
Erin Keating:Now I can't remember the Baden Meinhof phenomenon, like where you see it all the time, then it's, you see more of it. Right? So, you know, again, not to, not to downplay how hard, right? So now it's like beefy, you know, it was like when everyone was talking about bananas for a while, right? It was like, well, how often are we really thinking that bananas are ruining our grocery bills?
Erin Keating:But for a while there, they were seeming like they were really high or eggs, same things, you know, like people were picking up on it, but we're not seeing necessarily that that's translating into what we think the SAR is gonna end up for me. Right? I mean, current sales rates tell us about what it's looking like in the automotive market.
Jeremy Robb:Yeah. So Charlie on our team puts together a forecast of SAAR on the new car side. And his estimate for May is $16,100,000 he just came out with the other day. That's a little bit of an uptick and stronger than we've seen lately. Our internal data that we measure each week has been showing that new car sales on a weekly basis have been rising for several weeks in a row now.
Jeremy Robb:And actually, surprising to a lot of the people, they're higher year over year for the last two weeks in a row.
Erin Keating:Right. Right.
Jeremy Robb:What happened last year in, like, right at the end of March or early April, obviously, the tariffs pulled a lot of new car sales forward, and we had like a high rise. But that was kind of short lived. It really started to get more normal as we got into the middle part of May. And so now we're seeing that we're actually doing a little bit better than we were last year, which I think is an important factor. Even though, like in April and early May, we were lower on a year over year basis from twenty twenty five's pull ahead, we were actually still showing rates of sales that were higher relative to the last few years.
Jeremy Robb:So the new car market looks a little bit better, but I did a little bit more digging for you here. We talk a lot about gas prices we just did. Is that driving more interest in electrified sales? Hybrid sales are up 40% since the Middle East conflict began. Yep.
Jeremy Robb:So big push in hybrids. Seeing increases in new EV sales, too. But our data says the hybrid sales pace is about six times that of EV. Right. And so a lot of it's driven there, and, you know, that's maybe a real factor of keeping overall new car sales a little bit higher.
Erin Keating:Sure. Yeah. I mean, I would think that people who are in the market and wanting, you know, more fuel efficient vehicles, the hybrids make complete sense. And we know that there's a lot of manufacturers that actually came out with more hybrids this year too. So we also have you know?
Erin Keating:And and and Toyota continues to work through their lineup and switch things to only hybrids. So where we would have seen them as a nice engine last year, we're seeing them as a hybrid this year, such as the four, but definitely a lot of word on the street about how hybrid the hybrid surge is real. It's here. It's It's real. It's here.
Erin Keating:It's growing, and it's and it's helping to keep our market solidly moving forward, it seems, regardless of what we're seeing in inflation.
Jeremy Robb:And, you know, it's hard it's hard to put your finger on it, but the consumer is you know, more consumers are buying hybrid vehicles, they're probably a little bit less concerned
Erin Keating:Right.
Jeremy Robb:Of those higher gas prices.
Erin Keating:Right.
Jeremy Robb:Right. When than if you're driving, for instance, my son's old
Erin Keating:Right.
Jeremy Robb:Owner, they Right. 15 miles per
Erin Keating:gallon. Exactly. Exactly.
Jeremy Robb:Yeah. But on the used car side, you know, just to wrap up on the retail side, things still look pretty normal there too. We're not running at quite the same pace we were last year and haven't for some time. But last year, even though on the new car side, the tariffs really drove the pull ahead into like early May, it kept used car sales rates pretty strong Right. For quite some time.
Jeremy Robb:And so the comp year over year is a little bit harder on the used side.
Erin Keating:But Right.
Jeremy Robb:Pretty normal seasonal trends on the used vehicle market also.
Erin Keating:We've sort of seen that spring browns play itself out. Tax refunds are sort of a little bit in the rearview mirror now, and and we've gone back to normal seasonality. Okay.
Jeremy Robb:I think we're getting back towards, like, in the in the used retail market, we're getting back towards the normal seasonality. We still see that prices, actually, overall used prices are up over 5% year over year. Jeez. That's a pretty strong move.
Erin Keating:Yeah.
Jeremy Robb:You know, I almost always break the used market down by age or something. But when you start seeing the overall up 5%, that's telling you that the Manheim and wholesale values have been strong for quite some time. We're still seeing that right now. Right. You know, we've talked about that several times this year.
Jeremy Robb:We've seen higher values for a long time. Last week was literally the first week all year long, we saw wholesale depreciation rates exceed what is normal. Wow. And they only did it by a tenth of a point. So we've been riding higher all year long.
Jeremy Robb:We've been holding higher. We're coming down now. We're still about four points ahead of where we would normally be, which is actually exactly what the Mannheim index, used vehicle value index, is up about four points year over year too. So still got some room to unwind. We'll see what happens.
Jeremy Robb:But used retail day supply is, if anything, a little bit tighter. So all of that supports itself too.
Erin Keating:Sure. And we continue to see used EVs. Is that still performing well?
Jeremy Robb:Used EVs are performing well. Yes.
Erin Keating:We
Jeremy Robb:tracked them at Manheim. They have been up now. They've risen. That basket of three year old used EVs at Manheim has risen for twelve weeks in a row. Really shocks people because I share that a lot publicly.
Jeremy Robb:And the people were just kind of like really surprised. But it's outpaced the non EV group for the last nine weeks. Right. And up 13% since where it started the year. So a lot stronger.
Jeremy Robb:Used retail EVs are up about 6% right now too. But the longer those wholesale values stay higher, the longer we'll probably see, you know, retail EVs stay higher too. So if something happens with gasoline prices, we'll see what happens. But a dynamics lot in the EV market on the used side this year.
Erin Keating:Yeah, for sure. A little plug for our colleague Stephanie Valdez Street. She was actually quoted in an article by Mims in The Wall Street Journal where he really went through all of the used vehicles that are on the market. He was actually in the market for one himself. And it was a really helpful article that he was able to outline which models he looked at and things like this.
Erin Keating:I sent him a quick email on the side say, what other emails what other EVs did you look at? I'm so curious for looking at a used EV. So definitely get out there. You know, there's lots of people out there commenting on what it's like to purchase any used EV and what you need to be looking for. So and it shows we still have them coming through wholesale.
Jeremy Robb:Wanna get educated.
Erin Keating:Right. Exactly. Well, anything else standing out to you before we let you go for what's happening or what we can expect to hear about next week?
Jeremy Robb:Well, we've got some good readings on inflation, personal income, personal expenditures coming out later this week, and then we get a updated reading on GDP growth.
Erin Keating:Oh, okay. Great.
Jeremy Robb:See where that is. That'll give us a little bit more input into how the consumer consumer spending is driving GDP growth, and then also how investment, AI investment, things like that are also impacting the macro picture.
Erin Keating:Well, let's hope we have a decision on the conflict over there by then, but who knows? There was deals in the works, but who knows? Well, thanks, Jeremy, as always, for joining us to keep us posted on what the macro picture looks like and what the auto market is doing right now. We really appreciate your insights as usual.
Jeremy Robb:Absolutely. Keep on keeping on, Erin.
Erin Keating:Thanks. Well, now on to some news in the industry. One of the biggest things that happened in the last couple of weeks is the Stellantis Investor Day. This was held last Thursday in Detroit, and Antonio Filosa, the new CEO of Stellantis, actually came and had a full day experience. I wasn't there person, but I attended virtually.
Erin Keating:And it was a day filled with a lot of announcements, especially a lot of partnerships and something that I think the industry is looking at because Stellantis is being probably the most vocal right now around what they're doing in partnerships. That includes some partnerships with Chinese manufacturers. So Leap Motor being one of the bigger ones. Dongfeng came out as well as being a partner. So I think everybody in the industry is really keeping an eye on what is Stoantis doing and the fact that they're being relatively forthright, not they have any reason not to be with their investors, but being very forthright about which Chinese manufacturers they're working with and where they believe that they're gonna bring that product to market.
Erin Keating:The the biggest announcement that they really had was clarifying what their global brands are gonna be versus their regional brands. And for the North American market, which is getting a majority of the investments, it was announced that both Jeep and Ram would be their focus global brands and that Dodge and Chrysler would be seen as regional brands. With that, there was quite a few announcements around models that they're going to be bringing to market. Admittedly, the Jeep announcements, those were ones that we've already seen in the market. They've called it the product offensive, and they've been out there with the new Jeep Cherokee, which disappeared from the market for a few years exactly.
Erin Keating:And everyone was wondering where it went. It was in a successful segment. It was a successful model, and the market was missing it. And so they brought it back. They realized that they had exited a specific segment in the market that they really needed to be in, and they brought it back.
Erin Keating:The challenge you're seeing these days and what we can see in the data is that it's fairly hefty price. So, you know, you can't come back into the compact segment SUV and be priced higher than the number one model in that segment, which is the RAV four. And so we're seeing it move a little bit slow more slowly than we thought it would. And in general, Jeep looks like they're pushing a lot of their model year '25 vehicles off a lot, which a lot of other manufacturers are doing as well right now. But it was just important to note that we did see an uptick in Jeep sales, but a lot of it did come from model year '25 as being pushed off a lot.
Erin Keating:Dodge came forward with some announcements on some power vehicles and performance vehicles as well as Ram. Ram introduced the muscle truck, which, you know, I'm I'm anxious to see how popular those are. I am sure there is absolutely an audience for them, but that wasn't the most exciting announcement to come out of Ram. What was really exciting was to hear that they are going to go into the smaller pickup segments. And we know that these are really important because the Ford's got the Maverick, which really helps them plant their feet in the pickup truck market.
Erin Keating:They've got the f one fifty, which, of course, is the number one selling pickup in the in the country. And then Ram is really trying to make a go forward, especially that we're seeing that f one fifty production has been delayed through various reasons, whether it's steel and aluminum costs that are, you know, increasing costs for Ford or the Novelis fire the plant fire that happened there. And most recently, they had to shut down part of a production line because of one of their supplier challenges. So the f one fifty is definitely in a supply crunch, and you've heard Ram and GM both, you know, salivating that they can go and capture some share there. So it remains to be seen all of the announcements that came out of Stellantis, which ones will truly prove to be fruitful for them.
Erin Keating:You know, we know that Stellantis has been struggling for the last few years, and they've started to make a comeback. We're hoping that these announcements really are come to fruition and help their company really build up market share. One of the interesting things that I took away from it was the way in which they were talking about their dealerships. If you all know, you know, most consumers do not know anything about Stellantis. That brand is not a brand.
Erin Keating:It is a consumer facing brand. We in the industry know it, but the brand knows the brand as Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Ram. And therefore, when you go to a dealership, you usually see all four of those brands there. I would normally think that that dilutes a little bit of your ability to get customers in through one big halo platform, such as, say, Ford. Ford would cater to a lot of those different segments.
Erin Keating:GM caters to a lot of those different segments. Toyota caters to a lot of those different segments, but they have this brand halo effect by being Ford, by being GM, by being Toyota. Whereas Stellantis as a halo brand just really doesn't exist. But they really talked about it as it being as their showrooms being an auto show. So I'd love to hear more about everyone's thought about that.
Erin Keating:I thought that was an interesting way to frame it. I wouldn't have normally thought of that as an auto show, but it was it was an interesting framing for how to think about going into their dealerships under multiple brands. So again, lots of announcements that came from them, a lot of cost cutting, a lot of information around how they were gonna divide up their portfolio. All of it is available, of course, on their media relations site, but some pretty interesting things to dig into. And I just wanted to highlight a few things that came out of that that were resonating with me.
Erin Keating:We do have the USMCA negotiations. This continues to come up and will in perpetuity till we have the tariff situation solved, but the negotiations have begun. So we know that there are still some challenges with this being bilaterally held. So Mexico and US are making a little bit more progress than Canada and The US, but we do know that the July 1 deadline is fast approaching. And so we needed to hear more about how they're actually getting into the meat of the discussions.
Erin Keating:And there's a couple of different scenarios that may come out of that that we're keeping our eyes on. In other tariff news, we know that the EU finally did pass their package and approval with their tariffs with The US. We have not heard that Donald Trump is going to back off of that yet. There's still one more step that EU needs to do in order to make that concrete. Donald Trump did set a July 4 deadline for the EU to come to the table with their negotiations.
Erin Keating:And so we're hopeful that that 15% on autos are going to stay at 15%, not go up to the 25% that were threatened because the EU wasn't able to ratify their side of the bargain. So that's moving forward. So fingers crossed that can give us a little bit of relief when it comes to the European manufacturers. The next big thing that's happening in a regulatory perspective that I wanted to hit on was the surface transportation reauthorization, which is a lot of people call this the highway transportation bill. It comes up every five years for reauthorization.
Erin Keating:This year, it's being attached to the name Build America two fifty Act. This is something that's just come out, a bipartisan reauthorization build. And one of the big things that it is including is framework for AV developers, autonomous vehicles developers, ways in which they can establish safety protocols, meet federal standards, implement cyber cybersecurity, crash reporting protocols, etcetera, etcetera. So they're trying to unify that, especially around commercial vehicles and how that how we should comply in The United States around autonomous vehicles. That's important because right now it's really wonky across all the states, And a lot of people have said, you know, this is one of the areas where we think we could benefit from a federal framework.
Erin Keating:So we will continue to look for how that moves through the house. And we know that there's a couple of other things that are being worked on in that same vein. They're being tied up in the conversation around that five year reauthorization, yet they probably have different mechanisms for coming into law. And that would be some of the things that secretary Duffy has been mentioning. So cutting back on some of the regulatory barriers that we have for manufacturing, Most of that is really settled into removing or sunsetting, if you will, regulatory requirements that are just don't make sense in the vehicles not right now.
Erin Keating:Not necessarily safety related, but there's some even around like lighting in vehicles. So a lots of things that are gonna be happening throughout the next couple of months. And we know that the midterms are fast approaching. And so I assume a lot of the stuff is going to go slow to get fast and fast to get slow. So we're gonna hear a lot of buildup.
Erin Keating:We'll probably get to hear a lot of, wait. We've got to sort some things out and then probably heal another step of buildup. If you get towards September, we're feeling like that's probably the timeframe that decisions will need to be made clear so that people who are going to the ballots in November know what has what's been progressed on and what hasn't. So September, I imagine, is gonna be a pretty heavy month for us to be coming to you and updating you on what's going on in the government, based on midterm elections. The last thing I just wanted to hit on was that Hyundai actually has now vocalized their whole service operations revamped.
Erin Keating:It's interesting. They had really gone through a serious growth spurt in The US, which, of course, is a great news from a sales perspective. But when you have a dealer network that is dealing with brand new people coming into the brand, more and more sales, that means that your service lanes can often get bogged down. Whether that's because of recalls and warranty work, because any new vehicles you're introducing to the market will often have some challenges when they first come out, or if it's just simply that they had more customers than they had had before. And so Hyundai service operators were really needing to beef up their quality and their service operations.
Erin Keating:So Hyundai has actually put something out there. One of the key things that came out of that was that they're going to have a 150 van mobile service fleet. We know that from our fixed ops study that if you listen to my conversation with Alex Bland, that convenience is one of the number one things that consumers complain about when they think about going through a dealership versus going to an independent repair shop or independent service shop. And the mobile fleets is one of the biggest things that's been recommended or that they'd like to see. You know, can you come service my vehicle at home?
Erin Keating:So Hyundai seems to be making a real effort in that way. They're also working with the dealers to expand, dealer capacity and to really work on technician shortages, etcetera, etcetera. So we're anxious to see how that all unfolds, but it's very timely. Fixed ops remains the big profit engine for most franchise dealers. And we know that this is a real subject of concern for consumers.
Erin Keating:And we know that there's a real battle out there between franchise dealerships and independent repair shops and independent service shops. So cool to see that coming out, knowing that some of our surveys and our research has really matched up with where the industry is, and we will be looking forward to seeing how that plays out for Hyundai's service satisfaction scores in the future. Right now, that's about all the major headlines that came out over the last few weeks. As always, we love having you here at the Auto Market Brief podcast. Please be sure to subscribe and always feel free to share the episodes.
Erin Keating:We do also have our coxautoinc.com website where you can find our insights, our latest data that we are publishing, new market summaries that Jeremy provides us on a weekly basis of how the market's doing and any of our research and intelligence work. Thanks for being with us, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Auto Market Brief. To stay up to date with all the latest news and perspectives from our team of experts, be sure to visit our insights hub at Cox Auto Inc dot com.