Now, 00R is all for being positive but I think this could be a bit too optimistic.
According to our friends at AutoSavant, who recently attended an event in Detroit, an automotive consulting firm, IHS, recently said that they expect auto sales to be back to normal by 2015. Before you all stand up and applaud loudly, let's be real here: these forecasts are merely educated guesstimates that rely heavily on variables that can change quite dramatically.
Just as easily as this forecast says 17 million plus units could be bought by 2015, I could say 13 million units are sold by 2015.
In reality, although it seems the media is celebrating an economy getting back up on its feet, I don't think we can be entirely sure of that. Unemployment still remains high, job creation remains low, the housing market never truly bottomed out and plenty of sellers are still in negative equity, on top of gas prices which aren't exactly cheap by American standards. Oh yeah, and employee salaries aren't exactly keeping up with the rising costs of living either.
For 00R one bullet point happens to stand out a lot more than the others:
"An increase in the population of drivers in the U.S.; per the IHS, the number of people of driving age will grow by 25 million over the next 10 years."
I wish I was at this event so I could have seen their data points because it's been proven, globally, that soon-to-be-drivers aren't as interested in getting behind the wheel anymore. That's because the overhead required to operate a vehicle these days -- fuel, insurance and maintenance -- is just out of a teen's reach who's working a $7.00/hr retail job.
We're living in new times and the mobile phone is more of a status symbol than a car.
What say you, Spies? Discuss...
With November sales now in the books, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the industry is back on the upswing, and that was reinforced during a recent American Press Association (APA) event in Detroit. There, the team from IHS—one of the more prestigious of the automotive consulting companies—presented its forecast for 2011 and beyond to key members of the automotive elite (oddly, they let me in, too)...
[Source: AutoSavant]
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