New Vehicle Sales Fell 12 Percent in First Quarter of 2022
Production and supply chain issues resulting in a lack of inventory, combined with high inflation to start the year, have largely affected new light-duty vehicle sales in Canada. And now we have the numbers to prove it.
Automakers collectively sold 337,039 units during the first three months of 2022 according to the Automotive News Research & Data Center, which represents a drop of 12.3 percent from the same period in 2021. That was when the industry was rebounding from the first couple of waves of the pandemic.
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What’s more, the latest quarterly performance is 2.9 percent worse than the previous one. A total of the 347,277 new vehicles were sold from October through December of last year.
AutoForecast Solutions predicted in its latest monthly report that a turnaround of the Canadian market is not expected before the latter half of 2022, if not next year.
Who Took the Biggest Hits?
Pickup and SUV leaders General Motors and Ford took the biggest hits in the first quarter of 2022. They fell 23.7 percent and 20.5 percent, respectively. Next up were Honda (-16.7 percent), Mazda (-14.1 percent), Mercedes-Benz (-13.1 percent) and Toyota (-12.9 percent). No automaker had it worse than Jaguar Land Rover, though, with a sales drop of 53.4 percent.
Volkswagen Group sold 7.6 percent fewer vehicles than it did a year ago, which isn’t that bad given the circumstances now, but the Volkswagen brand alone plunged 25.1 percent.
Increasing demand for electric vehicles is reflected in Tesla’s 17.3 percent improvement in the first quarter. The Californian automaker also seems to be less impacted by the ongoing chip crisis.
Mitsubishi managed to sell 37.1 percent more vehicles and posted its best quarterly result ever in Canada. Chrysler (53.7 percent), Genesis (38.1 percent), Porsche (29.7 percent) and Lincoln (18.5 percent) also had impressive gains.