The Auto Market Brief

Consumer spending remains unexpectedly strong as the auto market moves through the heart of the spring selling season.

In this episode of The Auto Market Brief, Erin Keating is joined by Cox Automotive Chief Economist Jeremy Robb to break down the latest retail spending data, new‑ and used‑vehicle sales performance, and what's shaping demand across the market.

Consumer spending and retail sales trends:
Jeremy explains why overall retail spending remains elevated, including a record month‑over‑month increase in gasoline station sales and the continued impact of tax refunds supporting consumer activity.

New, used, and EV market performance:
The discussion examines year‑to‑date new‑vehicle sales in the context of last year’s tariff‑driven pull‑ahead, cooling but stable used‑vehicle sales, tightening used inventory, and rising prices for top‑selling used vehicles. The episode also highlights improving demand and price retention for used EVs at both retail and wholesale levels.

Market signals and industry developments:
This episode also touches on Federal Reserve leadership updates, wholesale price movement, and retention trends, alongside key industry headlines from major automakers, marketplace expansion, and dealership consolidation activity.

The Auto Market Brief delivers timely data, clear context, and practical insight to help industry leaders make smarter decisions—what’s happening now, and what’s coming next.

The Auto Market Brief is powered by Cox Automotive. For more industry insights and expert perspectives, visit our Insights Hub at https://www.coxautoinc.com/insights.

Creators and Guests

Host
Erin Keating
Erin Keating is an Executive Analyst and Senior Director of Economic and Industry Insights at Cox Automotive. She brings 30 years of professional experience, including 14 years in the automotive industry, providing analysis on market conditions, automaker performance, and consumer demand shaping the economics of the new-vehicle market. Erin spent 10 years with Audi of America, including leading Audi Motorsport North America, informing her perspective on both commercial strategy and competitive dynamics.
Guest
Jeremy Robb
As chief economist at Cox Automotive, Jeremy Robb oversees the enterprise-level economic outlook, monthly forecasts, client advisory, media briefings and the strategic integration of data from the company’s extensive retail and wholesale platforms. Jeremy leads Cox Automotive's Economic and Industry Insights team, working directly with clients and executive leaders in sales, strategy and finance. He draws on his background helping companies consume data and insights to make better business decisions. He has been focused on finance and strategy for large corporations in the financial services and automotive industry for the past 20 years. Jeremy joined Cox Automotive in 2018 after spending 6 years at Nissan where he led functions in finance and remarketing.

What is The Auto Market Brief?

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.​

Erin Keating:

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. Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the Auto Market Brief. I am Erin Keating, your host and industry executive analyst here at Cox Automotive.

Erin Keating:

And I am joined as usual by our chief economist, Jeremy Robb. Welcome, Jeremy.

Jeremy Robb:

Hi. Good to be here.

Erin Keating:

Well, I know that you said that this week is a smidge quieter, although I think we would actually say, and you would agree, it's not necessarily quieter, just less volatile maybe, maybe because we've all been so used to the headlines swinging around left and right. I'd also say on the industry side, I wouldn't say it's quieter. I would just say not so many really loud, late breaking news, but a lot of interesting things that are happening on the industry side. So that said, I think you're gonna talk to us a little bit about consumer spending, sales, new, used, and some wholesale trends, as well as what's happening in the EV segment, which I think is pretty important. And, of course, we know that there's headway being made with the Fed, not only in the nomination, but where they might go this week or at least some guesses at that.

Erin Keating:

On the industry side, the big three are making a lot of noise right now, so I'll go into a couple of those headlines. Nissan's Espinoza is taking his US plan, I like to say, to 11. Amazon is spreading its wings a little bit further into the industry. We've Carvana with another dealership pickup and a couple of other little things that I'm gonna touch on. But let's start off with the macroeconomic view.

Erin Keating:

Over to you, Jeremy.

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah. Good morning. Nice to see you again here. You know, we just came off of our team meeting last week. So we were all together.

Jeremy Robb:

That was pretty fun. Nice to see everybody. Our team's had a lot of changes over the past six months. So, you know, we're still working through those is all that takes time, but it's great to see everybody and be down in the office with people face to face. Those are times that are really hard to replicate when you're not together.

Jeremy Robb:

So we were right, you know, on the front, a little bit less maybe news on the economic front, but I don't know that it's really quiet. It's just that we've all been used to the chaos and volatility that you mentioned over the past, at least the last eight weeks with everything in The Middle East happening. And maybe people have gotten a little bit more numb to that and calmed down a little bit.

Erin Keating:

So. And it's still there, It's still back.

Jeremy Robb:

It's still there. You know, the stock market kind of acts like it's not really there, kind of hitting new all time highs in some of the big indices overall. Still hear a whole lot about the big AI giants out there, but oil prices came down, they moved back up. They're still pretty high. Gasoline prices remained over $4 a gallon.

Jeremy Robb:

And you know, that affects the consumer overall. So all goes into that. But I want to start off, you know, I know that we listen to some other podcasts that play the statistics game, like the Moody's podcast, which is pretty fun. And so just for everybody knows, I'm putting Erin on the spot. She does not get warmed up to this, but you can ask me a question.

Jeremy Robb:

I'm just going to throw a number out there, Erin. I want to see if you can figure out what this number is because it's really pretty interesting. So 15.5%. Do you have any idea what that might be?

Erin Keating:

15 and a half percent. I'm gonna I'm gonna guess the year over year change in used DV sales.

Jeremy Robb:

No. That's that would be that's an interesting one, and I don't know it off the top of my head. Actually, I probably should. But, yeah, I'm glad I that's a that's a good one to figure out. No.

Jeremy Robb:

It does it does have to do with retail sales. So the retail sales numbers come out every month. They do like a preliminary version and then like an adjustment. And then the third version is usually the end. A lot of times those numbers can still get, they'll still change like over time, if you go back.

Jeremy Robb:

But 15 and a half percent was the month over month retail sales for gasoline stations in The United States. And it's the highest month over month percent since the report came into being in 1992. So the highest reading ever. Yeah. So you think about the high gas prices, and this is for March, right?

Jeremy Robb:

Driving a lot more just nominal spending. This is not adjusted for inflation or anything like that, but really, really strong there. Retail sales overall are 4% year over year. Core is up about 2.9%. So the numbers are still high, but the gas price, and we're seeing this in some of our other spending data that we follow also, really has an impact on the total.

Jeremy Robb:

That's what some people talk about is like, well, if you strip out some of the gasoline related features, you know, it's not quite as strong. And that's true. It's not quite as strong. But I ran a little chart looking at the data in more detail. And I was like, what is that?

Jeremy Robb:

And it stuck. It was so high. It just like made everything else look off. I thought it was a pretty interesting thing out there.

Erin Keating:

So I mean, what you're saying is that customers are spending more.

Jeremy Robb:

People are spending.

Erin Keating:

So good news, right?

Jeremy Robb:

Still seeing, you know, the tax refund data that comes in. We are estimating we're in the 75 ish percentage for everyone that's filed. So at this point, the people that still are left to file, they're probably filing extensions and things like that. So it gets a little bit less applicable if you're monitoring on a week over week basis. But the average tax refund is still up 11% year over year.

Jeremy Robb:

Obviously drives a whole lot of spending in the economy overall and matters a lot. And that's where a lot of these increased retail sales are coming through and we're seeing that. So really, really stimulative to the economy overall. And one of the things, you know, when we talk about the used car market, the new car market, wholesale, retail, whatever, The March timeframe is really, really interesting. And we did some of this, we have the Manheim Index that we talk about.

Erin Keating:

Right.

Jeremy Robb:

When we published the mid month movie a week or so ago, I was like, we probably should look at March and April combined, because sometimes timing's a little different, you know? Like the weeks get off or whatever, but it's such a big season as there are times when it makes more sense to combine some of the things that you're looking at. So you mentioned that, I'll just kind of bring it up, but new sales right now on the retail side, looked at it this morning, They're down 6% year to date. So through last week, Now sales this year versus last you and I've talked, I know you know this, right? Last year at this time, we had really strong retail sales from the tariffs pushing people to

Erin Keating:

Pull ahead, right?

Jeremy Robb:

Pull ahead. That's right. But last week, those sales metrics were only down about 7% year over year. The week before that, it had been down 10% year over year. But the interesting thing, because they were so strong last year, is even if they're running below where they were last year, they're actually still up above twenty twenty four, twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three levels.

Erin Keating:

That's good news.

Jeremy Robb:

So, and not just a little bit, actually quite a bit up. So I think there's a story there that even though a lot of people are gonna really anchor on the fact that the new car sales are down, they're still really, they're pretty good.

Erin Keating:

Whether we'll still match the SAAR from last year is to be determined what you're saying, but we're still seeing strong vehicle sales.

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah. Yeah. It's still good. And the used market, the used market's cooling off in terms of the rate of sales. That's really normal.

Jeremy Robb:

But this time of year too, used sales are flat year to date, total year to date. They were running up about 1% a couple of weeks ago. They've given a little bit of that back. Inventory is down about 6% year over year on used retail inventory. And we did go under 2,000,000 units at one point, which is our lowest metric we had ever seen in how we measure that data.

Jeremy Robb:

So day supply is pretty tight in the used market also, even though we've come off the seasonal high, which is totally normal. And that's translating into used retail prices overall are starting to tick up. But I take some of those metrics and I focus on like the top vehicles sold, which I think tells you more. The top vehicles sold three years old only retail are up 3% year over year. And they're moving higher than they are in faster than they did before.

Jeremy Robb:

So this kind of lags what happens in the wholesale market.

Erin Keating:

Right.

Jeremy Robb:

But but seeing that happen too. And then I'll give you one more. You kind of touched on it, but 2%. Got any idea what a 2% number might be?

Erin Keating:

So now I feel like it must be the month over month increase in EV used EV, something around used EVs?

Jeremy Robb:

You're getting there. Yes. So that if we measure yeah. The same way. You you said sales in EVs back to me, which I didn't know.

Jeremy Robb:

And I was like, I gotta go look that up. But if you look at the three year old prices of retail EVs, and we waited on what gets sold, we are up 2% now year over year. And two weeks in a row of that price moving up, that's a I I'll talk about the wholesale stuff in a minute, but it's definitely seeing a lot of pretty good demand for used retail EVs right now. Then the Manheim values overall, we looked at the one to ten year old, they were down a little bit last week, but they were down right in concert with how they normally move down this time of year. So nothing really crazy there.

Jeremy Robb:

They're still four points ahead of where they would normally be. So very strong overall. And then we have broken out a new thing. You may have seen it, but we look at the retention index every week for a three year old EV and non EV index. The EV index has outpaced the non EV index for four weeks in a row now, and it's 10 points above where it was last year.

Erin Keating:

Wow. And so that's retention of residual value or value or?

Jeremy Robb:

That is just measuring a three year old basket of EVs, where they started the year and then where they were as of last Friday.

Erin Keating:

Gotcha. That's pricing.

Jeremy Robb:

And they're up about 10% so far this year. Right. But up about 10% over where they were last year. And there's about a three point differential between EVs and non EVs. So now EVs are higher than non EVs.

Erin Keating:

See, and people thought the EV business was going away. 48. Boy, they didn't understand what was gonna happen.

Jeremy Robb:

Very interesting to see all these dynamics come into play.

Erin Keating:

Slow slow and steady wins the race.

Jeremy Robb:

Absolutely. So, yeah, there's a lot going on. You know, a lot of this data that I I talk about and and talk about with you and UC too. I publish kind of like a letter or an insights page that I send to our PR team on Fridays, and they put it up on our website on Monday mornings. If anybody wants to look at that, you can easily go see it.

Jeremy Robb:

Talks about what's happening in the economy, sometimes what's happening with new car sales, pricing, retail sales, the little tidbit about 15.5, I put that in there too. So that's a good place to find it all. I want to turn it back to you, but we've had some really exciting news at Cox Automotive last week. Why you tell us about that some?

Erin Keating:

Yes. So we had late breaking news that Cox Automotive has acquired the company named Fullpath. They are a customer data platform. And we're really excited about this because it's not necessarily closed just yet. Obviously, every major acquisition goes through some formal processes.

Erin Keating:

So, within thirty days or so, we'll be coming to you with a lot more details and conversations likely through this podcast, even maybe in a bonus episode. But it's really a strategic move for us to really increase the value of all of our connected retail products. You know, when we think about Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, our CRM, etcetera, it helps dealers really make a strong connection, leverage all the data that they're pulling into one place and get more personalized in their marketing, get more personalized in their connection with their consumers, etcetera. So, customer data platforms, CDPs, these have really come into the forefront over the last couple of years, and people have been, you know, really hyping them up. They're a real strong component of making sure all of your software is talking to each other to make you the most powerful in reaching your customers if you're the dealer.

Erin Keating:

And we're just really excited about what this is gonna look like when we get this fully integrated into our system and how it's really gonna help our customers, our direct customers, our dealers, but then also the end consumers really get closer and closer to the vehicle they want, at the time they want it, at the price they want it, etcetera, etcetera. So exciting news, more to come from details. But, yes, thank you for bringing that up. It's pretty cool to have our own headline once in these things.

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Thanks for talking about that. The Yeah.

Jeremy Robb:

I've heard the CDP, like, acronym a few times, and now I think I remember what it is. But Yeah. That's very cool.

Erin Keating:

CDP, CDP, you know, same same but different. Yes. Well, you Jeremy for being here today. You know, one thing I just wanted to touch on real quick that I didn't hear you mention, but I know that we talked about upfront. Fed, anything that you wanted to mention about what's going on at the Fed?

Jeremy Robb:

Oh, yeah. Thanks for reminding me. It's hard to keep all this stuff front of mind. Fed, obviously, we'd been talking. Kevin Walsh was nominated to be the new head of the Fed, went through some hearings over the last couple of weeks.

Jeremy Robb:

And on Friday, I was actually writing the weekly market summary about all of this and had published it internally to the team. And then I saw where they had dropped the probe into the Fed and Powell, which was the big hurdle from the Senator, I think from North Carolina about approving Warsh is the new Fed president. So, once that was dropped, that really cleared the way for this. And, you know, it looks like Kevin Warsh is going to be the next Fed president. And no one knows if Jerome Powell is gonna stick around or not.

Jeremy Robb:

He could take a different role, but Right. I'm I don't know. I kinda think you he'll he'll move on. Yeah. But but yeah, that was that was big news and and thanks for reminding me.

Erin Keating:

Sure. Absolutely. Well, thanks so much as always Jeremy for bringing us that macro picture and for putting me on the spot for the the the statistic. That was fun. I'll have to brush up, make sure I'm ready for it next time.

Jeremy Robb:

I know. I'll I'll I'll whatever it's coming. So good to talk to you.

Erin Keating:

You too. Right. So now let's hit the highlights for the industry update, the industry news. You know, I mentioned a couple of things, the big three. So this is usually when we're referring to GM, Ford, Stellantis.

Erin Keating:

One in particular, I'm just gonna call Barley Show, and I feel like he's got a little daisy, and he's thinking, should we? Should we not? Love you. Love you not. You know?

Erin Keating:

He's had a lot of news out there. Been very vocal previously about manufacturers, his love for the vehicle that he had actually tested for some time, thinking that they've really gotten ahead. And I don't think anyone disputes the technology, the technological advances and such of Chinese automakers, but he's been specifically very vocal. And most recently, he became even more vocal, as well as other domestic manufacturers, about how we must keep the Chinese automakers out of The US market. And in fact, senator Bernie Moreno has actually put in place a new proposal to even further tighten the Department of Commerce ruling around software and hardware coming from Chinese companies.

Erin Keating:

So Ford is fully behind us as well as all of their domestics. Farley in specific was very vocal about this. But then interestingly enough, there are a lot of rumors out there about Ford and Farley investigating even further partnerships with Chinese manufacturers, specifically Geely is the one that's in the rumor mill right now. And so it's just kind of this juxtaposition of we don't want them to come into the market, but at the same time, we're gonna go ahead and work with them. And now mostly that's for the Chinese market and perhaps other markets across the world.

Erin Keating:

But it's interesting enough to know that he's kind of realizing he needs to partner, but also saying, don't make them come here. So that was kind of interesting. And furthermore, as we talk about that, because we usually associate Chinese manufacturers with electric vehicles, GM, who's really the heavyweight in the EV space right now, especially with the domestics, is actually dialing back on some of their electric vehicles. They've realized that the trucks and SUVs are still struggling to pick up market share with electric propulsions. And so they are dialing back the production of those particular vehicles.

Erin Keating:

So just interesting because, again, GM sort of leads in that electric vehicle space in domestic, but they are starting to pull back on their production of the larger vehicles that they have in the electrified portfolio. And then further, let's talk about Stellantis real quick. You know, they're really they have been really at it to try to make this big turnaround. Antonio Filosa, their new CEO, has been really laser focused on saying, let's get focused. Let's let's decide on how we're gonna move forward.

Erin Keating:

And we can see from a lot of the movement that Jeep and Ram are really the brands that they're going to be leaning into for the profitability in The US market. And furthermore, they actually picked up a new SVP of sales and dealer network, and that is Michael Orange. She's formerly of Hyundai. And so we can just see that a lot of leadership moves happening over there, a lot of portfolio decisions happening over there. So continue to keep an eye on Stellantis as they try to really bolster their US business.

Erin Keating:

As I mentioned, they're not the only ones. Nissan's CEO, Ivan Espinosa, he has gotten very, very clear and concise about what his plan is for The US market. He obviously values this market as every other manufacturer does, and they've really had to struggle to figure out how do they nail it, how do they come back, and as I said earlier, go to eleven, to quote the famous movie. And so one of the things, one of the big pieces of news that they had out there was that they're reentering the body on frame SUVs and pickups. And the Xterra is actually going to be one of the first moves in that area.

Erin Keating:

And they're going to continue to expand their drivetrain. So the powertrain, they're gonna expand on their hybrids. They're, you know, they've introduced the broader e power adoption and new parallel hybrid system. They're resetting Infiniti, so they're a luxury brand. They are going to go ahead and have a consistent five nameplate lineup, and this is important as we know almost every manufacturer that manufactures for the mass market also has a complementary luxury market partner.

Erin Keating:

And Infinity had really started to drop behind and had gone down to two models in The US, especially once tariffs hit. But he's reinserting that brand into the market to really help lift both the infinity picture, but then anytime you have a halo brand like that, it can help your mass market brand. So that's another exciting thing. He's increasing localized production, focusing on targeting at 80% of US sales being built in North America. Shifting back to retail buyers, he's aiming for 5.7% US retail market share.

Erin Keating:

So going a little bit back away from fleet sales, which we know Nissan is very heavy in, but really trying to shift their attention back to meeting the retail market where they are, and then driving more volume per nameplate by offering the wider powertrain selection across nameplates. So overall, we can continue to expect Nissan to show some increase in sales, which we have seen this year, and really bolster their sales and marketing to up their game in The US market with some really good new product information. And, you know, there's also still the rumors out there that the Honda partnership could continue and that it specifically would be focused on The US market. So that covers a lot of our main automakers or big mass market news that was out there. Something else that came up, Amazon continues its expansion.

Erin Keating:

Now it's questionable whether some dealers feel like it's really resulting in big sales, you know, a lot of different movement. Some of them have complained that it's been a little underwhelming so far. It is a new marketplace, but it is now active in 130 cities, and it includes new, used, and certified pre owned. So they've expanded what they're offering through their web and they've actually gone into even more automakers. So it's definitely something we're keeping an eye on here at Cox Automotive.

Erin Keating:

You know, it's another marketplace opportunity for the automakers and the dealers. But again, time will still tell whether it's really drawing a lot of extra attention or more sales for the businesses. So we'll keep an eye on that. Another big retailer out there is Carvana. They continue to come forward with different headlines.

Erin Keating:

And even though Stellantis had said, hey, gonna start capping how many dealerships that any one entity can purchase. Clearly, there was a seventh acquisition in play before that announcement was made. And I would assume this seventh acquisition, because it was already underway, it got through. And so therefore last week it was announced that Carvana has, in fact, picked up its seventh franchise dealership from Stellantis. You know, to us, we continue to look at this as more of like a distribution model, but it's really interesting to keep an eye on how they do in the new vehicle market and what they end up doing with these particular dealerships where they're located.

Erin Keating:

So keep an eye on that. We also did have the Fullpath acquisition that I wanted to make sure I mentioned. And we're keeping an eye on sales and inventory as Jeremy and I discussed upfront. We are still seeing a pretty healthy market out there. EVs are, you know, people are paying a little bit more attention to EVs.

Erin Keating:

You know, again, I would be hard pressed to say that someone out there that isn't in the market for a vehicle right now would be out there shopping for an EV just because gas prices have gone up. We have to keep in mind how high interest rates still are and how expensive vehicles still are. But we are seeing an increased interest in shoppers looking at EVs and especially used EVs, as Jeremy remarked. So that about ties it up for us for all of our news and headlines for this week. We appreciate you joining us.

Erin Keating:

As always, please make sure that you check our website, coxautoinc.com. There's a section there called Insights. You can see all of our press releases. You can see the weekly summary that Jeremy referenced and, of course, any of our other announcements that we have out there. Thanks for joining us, and we'll catch you next time.

Erin Keating:

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 coxautoinc.com.