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How Recession, Inflation & Supply Chains Will Impact the 2023 Truck Market
Leading indicators around GDP, residential investment, unemployment rate, personal expenditures, and the consumer price index are pointing to a recession in the U.S. this year — but how severe and long-lasting will it be? And how will these factors affect the commercial truck and equipment industry market?
A discussion of these issues formed the basis of the webinar “Understanding Market Dynamics Influencing the Work Truck Industry in 2023,” presented by NTEA’s economist Steve Latin-Kasper on Jan. 11.
Here are the key takeaways.
Last year was characterized by unexpectedly strong GDP growth in the third quarter. The fourth quarter of 2022 is expected to show slower GDP growth, said Latin-Kasper, senior director of market data and research for NTEA, the association for the work truck industry.
Moving into 2023, there is consensus that at some point GDP will go flat to slightly negative versus 2022, though the timing is in question — some say the first two quarters, while others are pushing the recession further out.
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Laid-Off Tech Workers Are Just What the Auto Industry Needs Subscriptions
While the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is best known as an annual excuse to marvel at outlandish gadgets, Dirk Hilgenberg, head of Volkswagen AG’s software unit, came to this year’s show in early January looking for a different kind of tech product: software engineers.
The 58-year-old German auto executive turned his CES booth, a colorful stack of shipping containers, into a makeshift hiring hall with the words “JOIN US” emblazoned across the side. His unit, dubbed Cariad, has quintupled its headcount, to about 6,600, since its formation in July 2020, and Hilgenberg is hoping to hire an additional 1,700 people this year. To lure attractive candidates, he’s taken a liberal approach to remote work and made English Cariad’s de facto language—a concession for an automotive behemoth built on proud German engineering. Cariad’s goal, as he told a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter, is “tapping into the talent and experience pool of US companies.” He was using the show as a jumping-off point for his recruitment campaign. “The time couldn’t be any better,” he said.
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The end of the EV premium? Deflation hits auto industry as Ford ups stakes in electric car price war with Tesla
The chief executive of Tesla lowered the entry point for his most popular vehicles at the start of the year in order to reduce rising inventories and reverse two straight quarters of sales volumes that fell short of Wall Street’s expectations.
Domestic rival Ford is now upping the stakes with its own price cuts for the Mustang Mach-E crossover, America’s third-bestselling EV.
Chief executive Jim Farley said manufacturing costs per unit would drop by ramping production to 130,000 units in 2023, an increase of two-thirds from the 78,000 built last year. The improved economies of scale, he argued, allow the company to pass the savings on to the customer.
“At Ford we want to make EVs more accessible, so we’re increasing Mustang Mach-E production and reducing prices across the Mach-E lineup,” he posted to Twitter on Monday.
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