The Auto Market Brief

Consumers are still spending, unemployment remains low, and auto sales continue to outperform expectations. But a closer look at the data reveals a more complicated story.

In this episode of The Auto Market Brief, Erin Keating and Jeremy Robb unpack the latest economic indicators, from consumer spending and labor participation to trade negotiations and EV lease economics, to better understand what's really happening beneath the surface.
In This Episode.

Why strong consumer spending may not tell the whole story:
Consumer spending continues to rise, but much of the growth is being driven by necessities while household expenses are increasing faster than income, creating ongoing affordability pressure.

What labor market data is really signaling:
Employment remains strong, but declining labor force participation raises important questions about the true strength of the workforce and where future growth will come from.

How EV lease residuals are reshaping the market:
Negative equity positions are becoming a growing concern for leased EVs, prompting automakers to explore new strategies to retain customers and keep vehicles out of wholesale channels.

The discussion also covers USMCA renewal uncertainty, June sales performance, autonomous vehicle regulation, and the competitive pressures confronting global automakers.

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. Hello, and welcome back to the Auto Market Brief. I'm Erin Keating, your host and industry executive analyst here at Cox Automotive.

Erin Keating:

And as usual, I've got our chief economist, Jeremy Robb, riding shotgun alongside of me today. Hello, Jeremy.

Jeremy Robb:

Good morning. Happy early fourth weekend.

Erin Keating:

Yes. We've been joking about the semi quincentennial that I've nerded out on the actual word for the two fifty. So

Jeremy Robb:

It's a good word.

Erin Keating:

Big weekend ahead of us. It is a good word. It's a it's a nice word to have to parse and helps you learn your Latin as as Mark Schirmer was telling us. And so

Jeremy Robb:

very slowly, I think, or I would get tongue tied.

Erin Keating:

Yes. Exactly. Well, big weekend and a big win yesterday with The US. I think we're all feeling really great going into the weekend. So I'm glad that we get to record right before we head into the fourth of July holiday.

Erin Keating:

So, Jeremy, I know we're gonna start with the latest read on the economy and demand. We've got some fresh data on GDP, consumers, inflation, jobs. Plus, we really had a stronger June sales backdrop and a few EV value dynamics that I wanted to maybe talk a little bit about and worth felt were worth unpacking. And then I'm gonna take us through some market data from the market data into the industry storylines that are getting our attention right now. So automaker performance in June, a little bit all over the place, but I think tells us the same story that we've been we've been singing regulatory decisions that are hitting some of the EVs out there, some autonomous vehicle rules that have just been made clear, and some global restructuring pressure.

Erin Keating:

So with that, why don't we kick off with you, Jeremy? Let's talk about the market.

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah. Sounds good. You know, we're in the holiday period kinda, and we we've talked about, you know, a lot of people are out, but the data has not been slow, you know, and some really big things have come out. Last week, we got the final read on q one GDP was revised higher to 2.1% from 1.6%. So, you know, that's good overall, but there were some really kind of odd things that drove that higher.

Jeremy Robb:

We still have a lot of AI investment spend. Investment spending was driving over a full point of the 2.1%. Consumer expenditures, which typically drive a lot of GDP growth, actually was pretty light in terms of the rate of growth, got revised down. So, not so good on that front. We got the government spending that picked up a little bit.

Jeremy Robb:

Q4 was impacted by the government shutdown, so that rebounded some. But the thing that caught me in the final reading was that imports were revised down. And so when we when we import less goods into The US, it's less of a drag on overall growth. So our net exports number was a was a lot better, and that was really what lifted the number overall. So, some kinda interesting things going on there that could be potentially tied to some of the oil Middle East crisis going on.

Jeremy Robb:

So, we'll see where that's going. But But yeah, that was that was pretty, that was that was the GDP read overall. Then, then we got some other information on how consumers might be feeling and, and why they might be feeling not as good. Right? So we got the data on personal income and personal expenditures.

Jeremy Robb:

And personal income was up 0.7% in May, that was a pickup, I think, from where it was in the prior month. But it's up 3.8% year over year. That sounds pretty good. The problem is the government also measures how much consumers are spending.

Erin Keating:

Right.

Jeremy Robb:

And that can that spending growth also grew by 0.7%, and it's higher by 6.3% year over year. So, we did the mid year review last week or so. We had that slide where we're showing how expenses have outpaced income for the last several years. And then, know, that continues to dig into consumer savings and how are they coping with things. And long term, generally, we see income outpacing expense.

Jeremy Robb:

But clearly, this year, we're seeing a, you know, about two and a half percentage point gap between that. And that that's a drag. That is why consumers can like when they cite inflation, but then, you know, they're they're also not able to kinda make ends meet more so. That's that is clearly a a negative for consumers overall.

Erin Keating:

Right. And I don't know if you saw the the recent report that came out from Morning Consult. There was an interesting breakdown around consumer sentiment. So what consumers say doesn't necess You know, consumer sentiment's going down, but they're still spending, but it's really necessity oriented. So, you know, yes, maybe we shouldn't always believe what consumers say, but we should also make sure we're looking at the underlying, you know, kind of where the spending is going.

Erin Keating:

So I thought that was really helpful to see that.

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah, it's really important. You know, I think I was in a meeting with them last week, and we talked about it some. But if you ever look at my monthly deck, when I have all those, you know, myriad of slides, consumer spending and consumer sentiment are right beside each other for the same reason. Right? You watch watch what people say, but pay more attention to what people do.

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah. But the the thing with consumer spending is that it's been really driven by gas station spending

Erin Keating:

Mhmm.

Jeremy Robb:

Over the last three months. And and we know why, right, with with high gas prices. But so it looks it's a good number, but, like, it's not going into other parts of the economy, really.

Erin Keating:

Right. Exactly. What about jobs? Speaking of income, because I know that we got that report just this morning. Right?

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah. So I was trying to chew through all of that information early this morning. And, you know, the headline stuff's pretty easy to see. But the why is like the more interesting part, you know, that's what I like to do. So, the overall number in June, we saw added 57,000 jobs to the overall report.

Jeremy Robb:

So, that's a good We're still producing jobs overall, but we had downward revisions again to both May and April levels. And May jobs numbers were pretty good in our society that we live in right now. The stock market's up today because the jobs number was weaker than people thought it was going to be. Right? And the number in May was stronger than it was had been anticipated.

Jeremy Robb:

So, that's, you know, we're still seeing jobs. It's positive growth. It's low growth. The unemployment rate is still really low, and it went lower, went to 4.2% from 4.3 overall. So, that's part of it.

Jeremy Robb:

The other part, and we've talked about this too, is the labor force participation rate went down again by three tenths of a point. 1.5% outside of the pandemic has not been there now since June 1976.

Erin Keating:

Wow.

Jeremy Robb:

So, we're going back. We're going backwards fifty years. Right?

Erin Keating:

It's fifty

Jeremy Robb:

years, I guess. So, pretty that's why the unemployment rate can stay so

Erin Keating:

low. Right.

Jeremy Robb:

You know Right. Even without creating a whole lot of jobs. But but on the good side, we we got increases in average hourly earnings. They're up three and a half percent year over year. That ties into the personal income kind of growth rate too.

Jeremy Robb:

So that we're talking one of the things I pulled out of the report to talk with you about that I thought, you know, it's it's World Cups going on everywhere, all that. Leisure and hospitality was down in June, though. Job growth was. Yeah. And and specifically accommodation and food services, which I thought was pretty interesting given

Erin Keating:

Yeah.

Jeremy Robb:

All the other

Erin Keating:

Well, you gotta wonder, did they do a lot of the advanced hiring in May and therefore didn't need to keep hiring. If it is World Cup, right? Because we talked about maybe that was the influence. And so if it is World Cup related, then there might have been a lot of, at least you saying that to me, my first instinct is maybe they did the hiring they needed to do. It'll be interesting to see how much falls off after World Cup's done.

Erin Keating:

Like, this, was it all temporary labor, I guess, you know?

Jeremy Robb:

Well, I'll tell you, if you, if you average out May and June, if you think about it that way, it's still negative. Yeah. So, and some other people have talked about, well, they do, they hire ahead of time, but maybe not, maybe just right ahead of time. Right. And so they did, but they saw 40,000 jobs added in May and 61,000 jobs down So.

Jeremy Robb:

In Yikes. Yeah. It's it's just there's gotta be some implication from World Cup and some of the job stuff. Not exactly sure where they're showing up. That might be some of it, but it could be somewhere else too.

Erin Keating:

Right. Yeah. That's interesting. Especially as we go into, the holiday season, you would think that you'd be ramping up. But if consumers are feeling tighter in their budgets, they might not be spending as much to do the vacations that they would typically do.

Erin Keating:

So maybe that's also a drawback on hospitality.

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah. And the same thing too, like we saw this week, we the conference board gives out a number on consumer confidence, and that came out. And it was a little bit better, but it's not great growth. You know, consumers are still worried about inflation and things like that. Those readings, you know, they they look a little bit better.

Jeremy Robb:

But it's you know, there's just multitude of factors Yeah. Out there any way you look at it, how how they impact the consumer overall.

Erin Keating:

And I know you and I listened to a lot of the same podcast, but I thought it was interesting. On my walk last night, I was listening to one specifically, we don't need to name it, that was talking about, like, teenage labor participation and how, you know, back twenty years ago is like two thirds of every teenager had summer jobs and now it's one third. And like, what does that mean? I mean

Jeremy Robb:

I actually went through that yesterday afternoon myself.

Erin Keating:

Know exactly who I'm Yeah. Talking Exactly. I So thought that was, interesting. And certainly looking around, yeah, when I was growing up, like, you had a job in the summer. That was not even a question.

Jeremy Robb:

That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Erin Keating:

And, and now it's and it's true. It's it's bizarre even just like some of the thought process behind it is like school, sports, you know, are those better things for parents to be pushing? Now granted, that's probably an upper of the shape of the k decision, you know? Yeah.

Jeremy Robb:

You would think so.

Erin Keating:

Yeah. You would think so. But that's interesting that we lost a third of teenage participation, which is usually over the summer. So.

Jeremy Robb:

Well, and the you know, I think what that also talked about too is one person they were talking to said, basically, they thought it gave them a lot of skills for later in their life. You know? Right. So it's like interesting. The number part is interesting, but I I would I would buy into that, that working some, when you're younger, dealing with other people and, you know, responsibilities and all is probably good for most of us Right.

Jeremy Robb:

You know, for a little bit of structure. So so, yeah. It's yeah. It's funny. I I I listened to the same thing, apparently.

Jeremy Robb:

Yesterday. Yes. But I was gonna turn the tables on you a little bit. And we also had some pretty news, big news yesterday that came down on the USMCA, and I wanted to get see what you thought about that.

Erin Keating:

Yeah. I mean, I think the headline was that, you know, we've decided, you know, America has decided not to renew, which simply So it sounds really big, like, my gosh, we're pulling out. No, not renewing is not a termination of the agreement. Basically, were six years that since it got put into place that at this point now, we had to make that decision. Are we gonna renew it and therefore it would just carry forward the way it was going on from before?

Erin Keating:

Or are we going to say we need to negotiate this, honestly, even on a year to year basis? So that's what the administration was really saying is, hey, we are not in agreement to renew it as it is. So, negotiations are continuing to happen. There's some pretty sticky points in there that The US wants to argue, and they really do seem to be moving in this bilateral sort of discussion with, you know, one discussion with Mexico, one discussion with Canada. Mexico seems to be moving further along than Canada is.

Erin Keating:

A lot of pushback, of course, from the automotive industry for sure, saying, no, let's please make sure we keep this North America trade agreement going because it really does impact the automotive market. But time will tell. I actually think we will start hearing a lot more in the news as the months go on. So it sounds like as if we've stopped the conversation, but in fact, to me, it's like, let the games begin. To me, that was more of a signal of let's the let the games begin.

Erin Keating:

We've now gotta start negotiating it. Any party who wants to leave it would have to give a six month notice that they wanna leave the agreement. So everything stands as it is right now. Nothing changes with the way the tariffs are administered now. But we shall see, but it creates uncertainty for sure.

Jeremy Robb:

Do you think, like, some of the OEMs, you know, obviously, we'll have to take this, like, almost month to month, right, what what they're do with it. Do you think they're thinking, I just gotta get through this next, you know, cycle of of who runs the White House and maybe maybe we've got a better chance? Or what do you think about that?

Erin Keating:

I mean, I think overall, every automaker has had to be, in the last year, making just some really difficult strategic decisions. And a lot of them have started moving forward, just saying, okay, here's what we think we know, and this is what we're going to have to do. Certainly, their lobbying efforts have picked up. The automotive executives have been very vocal around how they feel about the need for this to be settled. Certainly, they might be thinking we can wait it out, but this administration likes to make decisions on the fly.

Erin Keating:

So I imagine they're not putting all their hopes in the fact that this will just string it out. There's been a lot of talk of, like, is this is this actually being strung out because midterms are coming up? So, if this gets dragged out a little bit, then there's nothing to really be reacting to at midterms. So then something will, know, the hammer will drop maybe right after midterm elections. So, that's a plausible idea of what's happening right now.

Erin Keating:

But I do think also the Iran war just really side, you know, swiped the whole administration and their focus has been there dealing with that crisis. So, there's been continued things in the system that have just held up some of the discussions.

Jeremy Robb:

Cut up all the energy to take

Erin Keating:

care of

Jeremy Robb:

all the things. Yeah.

Erin Keating:

No pun intended, right? So, yes. Yeah. So, it will still be it's still a very big deal. There's a lot of folks that will be continuing to have a very vocal response to it and wanting a say in it.

Erin Keating:

And we all still, you know, even from our perspective, would say, you know, just put it in ink and let's get something on the table that we can rely on for a couple of years at a minimum.

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah. Investment in planning for the production standpoint is just like so nuts. Yeah.

Erin Keating:

Right. Yeah, it's really nuts. But again, so so we didn't terminate it. Everything goes on as as it is right now. And we will just wait on our tippy toes for what's going to happen next, which we've gotten very accustomed to over the last year and a half, right?

Erin Keating:

Yep. Yeah. That actually leads me to want to turn the tables back on you because usually I don't necessarily ask a ton of questions here, but I saw something in our headlines that I thought you might want to chime in, especially given your purview over our used EVs and what Manheim is looking like, etcetera, etcetera. So Kia came out of the blue for most people and said, hey, any of you out there who leased an EV, we're going to give you a $9,900 payback essentially or discount for you to keep your lease, to buy it out at the end of it. So what do you think?

Erin Keating:

I mean, what's your initial response to that? What do you think the implications are?

Jeremy Robb:

First, I'm not really surprised, you know? It's like if you know how the accounting for that stuff works, it's it's really I think it's a good thing, you know? So we at Cox Automotive, we have a metric we call CAEL, which is Cox Automotive Lease Equity. And it measures, you know, if a lease, you know, person is in an equity or a deficit position at the end of their lease, the long term run rate is for those to be negative, a little a little bit negative overall. And that drives 60% of all, historically speaking, all lease maturities back into some like wholesale environment or used environment where a dealer can get their hands on that car.

Jeremy Robb:

Since the pandemic, we've had high equity, which has kept a lot of those cars from coming back to the market. That's continued to decline. And just yesterday, we pulled the numbers for June. That number went down quite a bit in June. We're still positive overall from the industry, but only around $450 positive.

Jeremy Robb:

So, normalizing a lot more. A lot more brands are negative overall. But then when you've cut it by fuel type, you start to see some really interesting trends. And so I'll just tell you, like internal combustion engine or ICE vehicles and your typical hybrids, those are still positive 1,500 to $2,000 above, like where you can buy out the car at residual value. But EVs are negative by roughly $7,500 And that's an industry average overall.

Erin Keating:

Sounds familiar, that amount. Sounds familiar. Right?

Jeremy Robb:

Ties directly into those tax incentives, You know, and I've ran the math too, that if you took $7,500 off the price of the new car, where is the residual value coming in? It's coming in, you know, right around 50%, which is really the long term run rate on a three year loan. So that makes sense. That Kia would offer this, maybe their cars are a little bit more underwater, their EVs. But what they're having to do, the accounting for Kia every month is they are taking down the asset write down of those EVs to real time.

Jeremy Robb:

Every month they've been experiencing or they're having to account for this expensive added depreciation on that EV. So for them to go offer it to the market at probably like a market price, like that level, they're just trying to keep some of those off the marketplace, keep some of them out of maybe the wholesale environment, and and let consumers, if they're happy with their car, buy that car out probably at what it's on their books for. Sure. You know? So I don't I I I think it's probably a good thing.

Jeremy Robb:

And I I did anticipate that more would do this Right. With all those EVs coming back. And they may not be the only one. They may just be the first one that's kind of Yes. Told people they could do that.

Erin Keating:

Well, as an as a lessee of their, stepsister brand, because they all are under the same motor group, but you know, they compete with each other. I sure hope that in three years when mine comes up, that I would be offered the same incentive because it is a great card. You would wanna you wanna potentially keep it. But yeah. Interesting.

Erin Keating:

Okay. Well, thank thank you. I I felt like You bet. I knew you'd have an opinion. Yeah.

Erin Keating:

Yeah. Well, great. Well, anything that you wanna leave us with before this big holiday weekend on the market?

Jeremy Robb:

No. You know, the auto sales have looked pretty strong going forward in June. We're gonna get all that done and see what happens with the total industry numbers and see if The USA keeps fighting, in the World Cup and experience a big, I won't belabor it, but I'll say two hundred and fiftieth because I don't know that I can say that word, very well.

Erin Keating:

It's okay. It'll be a spelling bee word for sure, I'm sure. Yeah. Coming up. Well, thanks Jeremy.

Erin Keating:

As always, I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend, a semi quintennial quintennial. See, now I even see you. Quintennial. But thanks again for bringing all of this to us. It's always helpful for our audience to hear, and have a great weekend.

Erin Keating:

Have a great holiday.

Jeremy Robb:

Great to be here. Thank you.

Erin Keating:

Thank you. Alright. So now let's hit some of those highlights of the industry news that I mentioned before. Real quick on automaker results for June, you know, they continue to come in, but it's looking like they're gonna land even higher than what we had expected. We had said, Charlie Chesbrough, our senior economist, had put out that we would be hitting 16,100,000 SAAR pace for the month of June, and it looks like from all the manufacturers reporting that we'll actually hit higher than that.

Erin Keating:

So I know the official reports will come out shortly, but that's really great news for the market. It continues to tell us that, you know, people are purchasing. They are really moving towards the mid. So, Charlie in the mid year review talked about how mid is in, and that was very evident across all of the vehicles that are doing really well. It was midsize car, midsize truck, midsize SUV.

Erin Keating:

These are the vehicles that continue to do really well. Some of the big winners, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, no surprise there. They continue to benefit from, you know, really strong demand across all of their portfolios, especially in the Camry, the RAV4 Hybrid. With the Honda, it's the CR V that remains America's top selling SUV right now. One surprise was, Stellantis, Ram pickups actually outperformed expectations.

Erin Keating:

And we do know that they were sort of going after that f one fifty customer that potentially was losing out because of some of the production challenges with the F-one 150 over the last couple of months. But even the Pacifica and the Wagoneer did well. So interesting look at Stellantis. What I would say on the losing side, and I don't love to use that word, but GM, you know, they do remain the volume leader, but their first half sales are down nearly 7% year over year. And, you know, as we as we mentioned in the midyear review, Toyota does continue to close that gap.

Erin Keating:

Large SUVs are showing some signs of weakness, and then, of course, they have a lot of EVs and several mainstream EV nameplates continue to struggle. So consumers haven't stopped buying vehicles. They're just becoming a lot more selective. That's what we're sort of seeing is the read for automakers in June. Onto a couple of other just real quick regulatory things that I wanted to mention.

Erin Keating:

We already covered the USMCA, but it was also announced this past week that the US Department of Commerce has denied Polestar authorization to keep selling their vehicles in The US beyond this current model year. Now, for most of you, you may understand and know that Polestar is owned by Geely, who also owns Volvo. So the interesting thing here is that Volvo was given approval to continue selling their vehicles in The US despite that ownership tie, whereas Polestar was said, you know, was told that they couldn't do that. There's about 32 Polestar dealerships in the country, but most of those, if not all of them, are actually part of a Volvo store or owned by the Volvo franchisee. So, we would imagine that they'll continue to be able to service the vehicles, but the sales, you know, will run down, they will sell down all the remaining models.

Erin Keating:

Worth noting, Polestar will stay in Canada, which can make this US decision feel even more like a specific regulatory or trade policy call. And we'll see how that, you know, decision continues to impact the USMCA negotiations. Another regulatory announcement was that NHTSA is considering eliminating the requirement for brake pedals in fully autonomous vehicles. This is big because so far, we've actually required that autonomous vehicles maintain all of the traditional human controls. And Tesla has certainly been fighting this for a long time.

Erin Keating:

Zoox and others have continued to fight this for a long time. And it certainly will change the cost dynamic of producing an autonomous vehicle if we can start to remove some of those traditional human controls that are required so far for autonomous vehicles to be able to ride on the roads. I mean, it is kind of interesting when you think about it. There's an autonomous vehicle with no human in it, yet there's side view mirrors and things like this, right? So it makes sense that there's been some argument to say we need to be able to deploy purpose built driverless vehicles.

Erin Keating:

So we'll see what happens there. Again, it's just a proposal. NHTSA is also still working on separate autonomous vehicle testing protocols. So the work continues in that space, but it was a big move to hear them even propose to remove some of those traditional human controls. And then lastly, I just want to talk about the Volkswagen restructuring pressure that they've had.

Erin Keating:

You know, was a big announcement, and it was worded as one of the most aggressive restructuring deals ever. This plan could include up to 100,000 job cuts, the closure of four German plants, and that's a big, big deal. Now granted, remember VW has a really unique ownership structure, and one of the key parts of their ownership structure is that they have the state of Lower Saxony and unions that participate in the ownership of that company. And so, they do expect to come up against a lot of pushback there because, of course, that's a 100,000 jobs and factories closing, etcetera, etcetera. But they're really under pressure to make sure that they can come back from the hole they've dug themselves in with the rising Chinese competition, you know, weaker demand, tariff pressure, etcetera.

Erin Keating:

So I think it's inevitable. This cost cutting is, you know, probably necessary or definitely necessary. One thing I would just observe is that I don't think it solves the bigger problem by itself. The big question I'm asking myself is whether VW can really build back its products and technology prowess compelling enough to regain momentum in China, and then of course restore the profitability of their two big luxury brands, Audi and Porsche, because the profitability of both of those brands really contributed a lot to the bottom line for Volkswagen Group as a whole. So yes, they need the cost cutting.

Erin Keating:

Yes, they probably need to make some really difficult decisions around their factories. But they've also have to have their eye, you know, very laser focused on what products are they building for which markets and can they get back in the lead of technology, again, both in China, which they relied very heavily on, and then, of course, in The US market for Audi and Porsche. So we'll continue to keep an eye on what our global manufacturers are doing because it's really important for our market as well. We rely on a lot of those manufacturers here in The US market, but big news coming out of Germany. With that, I will leave you to your holiday weekend.

Erin Keating:

Remember to check out all of our insights and updates at coxautoinc.com. Stay tuned into the auto market brief for the high notes in our economy and the headlines that pop for us in the industry. Please share, subscribe to the podcast. You can find us on all your major podcast platforms. And please note that we have created an our own landing page within the coxautoinc.com sphere and so that you can actually go there and even catch up on past episodes.

Erin Keating:

We thank you for being with us this week. Again, happy semi quincentennial, and we will talk with you next week. Take care. 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.