Steel Markets
February 24, 2015
US Vehicle Sales and NAFTA Vehicle Production Analysis for January 2015
Written by Peter Wright
The vehicle sales year had a good start in January with 16.7 million units on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis. Light trucks are benefiting from lower gas prices and reached 55 percent of light vehicle sales, the highest since 2014. This is good for the US assembly plants because the US light truck production is much higher than autos, (see Table 1 below). Also auto imports are higher than light trucks so the increasing sales of light trucks benefits US assembly plants disproportionately. Import market share in January was 20.36 percent down from 21.3 percent in December.
Total light vehicle production in NAFTA in January was at an annual rate of 15,920,000 units, up by 1.2 million from December or 8.1 percent. On average since 2004, January’s production has been 2.4 percent higher than December (Figure 1).
