Steel Markets
February 23, 2016
US Vehicle Sales and NAFTA Vehicle Production in January 2016
Written by Peter Wright
US vehicle sales in January exceeded expectations and came in at 17.6 million units on a seasonally adjusted annual rate basis. This was up by 300,000 from December and by 5.4 percent year over year. Light truck sales contributed 10.1 million units and autos 7.4 million.
This month we decided to examine the long term trend of auto and light truck sales. This is a work in progress as we intend to push the data back to January 2006, before the recession. However the recent changes beginning in early 2014 are so dramatic that we thought we would jump the gun and publish what we have so far. Figure 1 shows auto and light truck sales from October 2010 through January this year.
