According to a report by Fortune Chinese network on February 18, data Cars.com by auto trading websites shows that the average price of used cars in the United States in January 2022 was about $26,000, up 45% from a year ago.
Insufficient supply, especially shortages of semiconductors and microchips, is affecting new vehicle production. The difficulty of finding new cars has led to a surge in demand for used cars, which in turn has driven their prices up.
Persistent inflation in the economy has caused significant increases in the prices of many commonly used commodities. The prices of used cars, fuel and gasoline have all risen by more than 40 percent in a year.
Since 2020, the automotive industry has been short of "cores" because the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted people to buy a wide variety of electronic devices such as smartphones and microwave ovens, which all need chips. Affected by this, Ford's Manufacturing Plant in Chicago was forced to shut down on Wednesday, and nearly 5,000 employees were temporarily furloughed. At the same time, the shutdown caused by the lack of chips caused Toyota's profit to fall by 21% in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Another car trading site, TrueCar, provided used car price increase data similar to Cars.com. TrueCar said used car prices have risen by about 41 percent compared to a year ago. TrueCar's chief industry analyst, Nick Woolard, told Fortune: "As far as I know, this is a record, and it's true. ”
To be honest, seeing the large-scale development of the current second-hand car market, many people will find that the original second-hand car market is only a good market in our opinion, but in the current market environment, the second-hand car market has become a popular industry, so how should we view the development of the second-hand car market?
First of all, the reason why the second-hand car market can suddenly boom, the core reason is that the current entire automobile industry has fallen into a serious shortage of chips in the background, in the case of a serious shortage of chips, the supply of new cars is actually very difficult, we see that many new cars are now on sale, at least have to wait for 3 to 4 months or even longer, and even many popular new car models can not grab the goods, so in this context, Used cars have suddenly become the best choice in the market, especially those new cars that have just been sold for a year or two have become the object of enthusiasm of many people, so we see that whether it is the US market or the Chinese market, the price of the new car is even lower than the original price bought at that time, and in some special cases, the next new car is even higher than the original price of the car.
Secondly, let's be specific to the current U.S. market, the U.S. used car transaction itself is a very hot state, many Americans buy cars are more like to buy used cars, this is because the entire used car trading market in the United States is very open and transparent, in such a background rarely appear bad currency to expel the phenomenon of good money, which also makes the entire used car transaction become relatively smooth, it is the U.S. used car market This better trading background, so that Americans dare to buy used cars, In recent years, China's second-hand car trading market has made great progress, but there is still a certain gap between the completely open and transparent market.
Third, let's look at the trend of second-hand car price increases will continue? From the current market environment, we can clearly see that for the current market, as long as the shortage of chips has not been effectively solved, the price increase of second-hand cars may continue, and the market demand for second-hand cars is still very strong, so in this context, the second-hand car market can at least maintain a relatively good state of market development. But once the chip is fully supplied, the market competitiveness of new cars will increase, and used cars will not be as popular as they are now.