Total new car sales volume isn’t something most Americans think about every day. Automakers, though, know those figures intimately. For years before the pandemic, around 17 million people in the USA bought new cars each year. That benchmark became the industry’s norm. It allowed automakers to plan and adjust based on that large but reliable figure. Now, that playbook appears as though it’s effectively dead.

 

According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, roughly one million potential buyers have effectively disappeared from the new-car market since the start of the decade. Analysts now expect U.S. sales to hover around 16 million vehicles or lower this year, and some no longer believe the market will return to pre-pandemic highs before the end of the decade, if ever.