MCMM members,
I took the opportunity last Thursday to sit in on a one-hour webinar from SEMA (Specialty Equipment Manufacturer’s Association) that addressed Future Trends. It was oriented more to general trends than specifically about specialty equipment and was very enlightening.
I captured a few of the slides shown during the webinar, and, as a “registered non-member,” (meaning that I am a registered SEMA member, but not a paid member), I am able to reproduce a few of them here, since they are available to the general public in their research tab.
Some of you may not be interested in these charts and observations, but Ken and I felt that, for those of you that are, you may find something of interest in these current and future trends. Most of the webinar focused on the current and projected segments in the vehicle market. For those that may not have thought about it, specialty equipment includes all of the parts we buy to modify our Mustangs like add ons from Ford Performance, American Muscle, NPD, etc.
A few observations on the five slides included:
In the first slide, The Shift to Light Trucks by Brand, note that the 3% Passenger Cars by Ford in 2022 are exclusively Mustangs (non Mach-E). In 1992, 56% of Ford products were cars; 44% were light trucks (CUV, SUV, Van, and Pickups). A drastic change in 30 years. Note that these charts and comments exclude medium to heavy trucks.
The second slide, New CUVs Dominate…, it lists “sports cars” and I expect that would include the Mustang. At 10.3 million vehicles, this amount does not vary much from 2012 to current.
The third slide, Gas Still Dominating Brand Sales in 2022, I was pleased to see Ford still ahead of Chevrolet as a brand.
Slide four, U.S. Light-Vehicle Powertrain Outlook, is a great slide that gives us a longer term look as where our Gas Powered vehicle sales are headed through 2035. SEMA’s trend estimates that we will still be producing more gas vehicles than electric in 2035. A further comment here, on a more recent SEMA news post: several of the 17 states that tie their new vehicle requirements to the California CARB (California Air Research Board) rules are looking at opting out of California’s requirement that no new GAS vehicles may be sold after 2035. Unlike the California folks, I think these other states are seeing that we, even in 10-12 years, will not have a strong enough infrastructure to support the full electric vehicle products and we may not have nearly enough raw materials to support the massive amount of huge batteries needed to power them. Many, like Toyota, Ford and Honda, are putting major support behind hybrid vehicles as a much better direction.
The last slide, The Price for a New Vehicle…, is kind of scary. It shows $49,507 for an average new vehicle, up 4.9% since 2021, and a whopping 28.1% since just 2019. If you dig into this, I think you’ll see that the higher-optioned SUV’s and Pick-up Trucks and most electrical vehicles are to blame for this trend.
I welcome feedback on whether this type of news/updates are if interest to you, our MCMM membership. Let me know, please.
