Toyota – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

Companies that have been slower, like Stellantis, which owns Ram, Jeep and Chrysler, brands that do not yet have vehicles solely powered by batteries, face additional pressure to catch up. Jeep started selling a plug-in hybrid version of its popular Wrangler this year and plans to start selling fully electric vehicles by 2023.

“Automotive industry leaders have seen the writing on the wall for some time now when it comes to electrification and autonomous technologies,” said Jessica Caldwell, a senior analyst at Edmunds, a market researcher.

Ms. Caldwell added that the sales targets set by the Biden administration and the automakers “are certainly not unreasonable, and most likely achievable by 2030 given that automakers have already baked in large numbers of electric vehicles into their future product cycles.”

But many automakers are just beginning to bring electric vehicles to market that have been designed from the ground up to run on batteries. The Mercedes-Benz EQS, a luxury electric sedan, will go on sale in the United States this month. BMW began selling a battery-powered vehicle, the i3, eight years ago but was slow to follow up. The iX, an electric S.U.V., will arrive at American dealers early next year.

And just because companies make electric vehicles does not mean that people will buy them. Volkswagen began selling an electric S.U.V., the ID.4, this year, but sales in the United States so far have been only a fraction of the company’s established models like the Jetta or Tiguan.

By setting a clear target for electric vehicle sales, Mr. Biden is adding momentum to the shift to clean transportation, but he is also unleashing forces that automakers may not be able to control.

Consumers could stampede to electric vehicles as they become less expensive and people realize that gasoline vehicles are in danger of becoming white elephants with plunging resale value. That would strain companies that, with the exception of Tesla and some start-ups, are still mainly in the business of producing cars with internal combustion engines.

General Motors saw a slight increase in auto sales in North America in the first quarter, but operations continue to be hampered by a shortage of computer chips.

GM announced Thursday that it had sold 642,250 cars and light trucks in the first three months of the year, up just 4 percent, although sales slowed sharply a year ago when the coronavirus pandemic hit.

In contrast, Toyota Motor saw a strong increase in sales compared to the previous year. The Japanese company reported that North American sales rose 22 percent to 603,066 cars and light trucks in the first three months of 2021. Sales in March were a record high for the month.

Toyota’s big leap helped it outperform the Ford Motor, which was also hit by the semiconductor shortage. Ford’s sales rose just 1 percent to 521,334 in the first quarter. Stellantis – the company formed through the merger of Fiat Chrysler and France’s Peugeot SA – reported that sales in the US rose 5 percent in the first quarter.

Both Ford and GM saw significant sales increases from individual customers at dealerships, while sales declines were reported from fleet operators such as car rental companies and governments.

GM and Ford had to shut down or slow down production at a handful of plants. GM has resorted to manufacturing some vehicles with no parts using computer chips to install those components prior to sale if supply improves.

In a statement, GM hoped its strategy of building cars without some components would help “quickly meet highly anticipated customer demand later this year.”

This approach to automobile construction “underscores the dire nature” of semiconductor shortages, said Garrett Nelson, an analyst at CFRA Research, in a report. “One of the key questions is how much better the recovery in US auto sales can be from here.”

The chip shortage is reflected in GM’s unusually low inventory of 334,628 vehicles. That is around 76,000 fewer than at the end of the fourth quarter and half of the vehicles that dealers had in stock a year ago. Ford’s inventory was 56,100 lower than at the end of 2020.

GM’s weak sales were limited to the Chevrolet brand, whose sales fell 2 percent in the first quarter. This included a 13 percent drop in sales for its full-size Silverado pickup, a key profit maker for the company. Buick, Cadillac, and GMC brands had strong sales for the quarter.

Toyota also reported a drop in sales of its full-size pickup, the Tundra. However, the decline was more than offset by strong sales increases in the sport utility vehicles and cars RAV4, Highlander and 4Runner of the luxury brand Lexus.

Also on Thursday, Honda Motor announced that sales in North America rose 16 percent to 347,091 vehicles in the first quarter.