United States: ever older cars, but above all fewer in number
The US car fleet fell in 2020, for the first time in nearly 10 years. At the same time, the aging of the fleet continues and now exceeds an average of 12 years....
14/11/2021
The US car fleet fell in 2020, for the first time in nearly 10 years. At the same time, the aging of the fleet continues and now exceeds 12 years on average.
Would the new car be less and less popular? In the United States, a recent publication by the data aggregator IHS Markit shows that the car fleet is constantly aging, and that this has even increased during the pandemic to reach the value of 12.1 years on average.
Concretely, the Covid had two consequences in the country of Uncle Sam: a "drastic" reduction in sales of new cars, like everywhere in the world, but also and above all a reduction in the average mileage of Americans. Result: the fact of not being able to buy new vehicles was, in the end, not a problem since the cars already in circulation were not running, or little. Another consequence: for the first time in nearly 10 years, the US car fleet is shrinking, from 281 to 279 million units.
2020 may have been the most "prosperous" year in terms of scrapping (15 million vehicles were destroyed and dealt with by scrapping, a record in 20 years), that was not enough to encourage Americans to buy new cars, and by leverage, to reduce the average age of the car fleet.
Add to all this the shortage of semiconductors, and you get a second-hand market with prices exploding in all segments, as demand is increasingly strong for second-hand. “Excellent news” for the entire after-sales industry.