Ford Motor mentioned Thursday that its new-vehicle gross sales rose 10 % within the three months of April via June, due to sturdy demand for vehicles.
The automaker bought 531,662 motor automobiles, up from 483,688 within the second quarter final yr, as gross sales of pickups, supply vans and heavy vehicles elevated 26 %. The achieve in truck gross sales greater than offset a decline of practically 3 % in gross sales of electrical automobiles.
Ford bought 14,843 battery-powered vehicles and vehicles within the quarter, down from 15,273 a yr earlier. The corporate has needed to sluggish manufacturing to improve meeting traces and enhance its skill to make extra automobiles later this yr.
The improve work primarily affected the Mustang Mach-E, whose gross sales declined 21 % within the second quarter. Ford additionally bought 4,466 F-150 Lightning electrical pickup vehicles within the quarter. That was greater than double the overall from a yr earlier and the second-highest quarterly complete for the reason that truck went on sale.
On Wednesday, Basic Motors, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai and Kia reported will increase of 14 % or extra. General, automakers bought greater than 4.1 million vehicles and vehicles within the second quarter, in keeping with Cox Automotive, a market analysis agency, a rise of 16 % from a yr earlier. The full, nevertheless, was about 400,000 fewer vehicles than the trade sometimes bought within the second quarter earlier than the coronavirus pandemic.
Gross sales stay beneath their prepandemic ranges as a result of elements shortages have compelled automakers to supply fewer automobiles for a lot of the final three years. The provision of laptop chips, which have been notably exhausting to get, has improved in current months, permitting automakers to supply extra of the automobiles that customers have been ready to purchase.
Cox now expects complete 2023 gross sales to exceed 15 million automobiles. Whereas that might be an enormous enhance from final yr’s 13.9 million, it’s nicely beneath the 17 million the trade bought earlier than the pandemic.
