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Toyota Motor outdid General Motors in terms of sales to become the best-selling carmaker in the U.S. It was reported that this happened for the first time ever.
Toyota beats analyst’s expectations
According to CNBC, Toyota reported its sales on Thursday, July 1, and based on the figures. It was able to sell 688,813 units of vehicles in the U.S. covering three months, the second quarter, which is from April to June. In comparison, General Motors was only able to sell 688,236 vehicles in the same period.
With the total, Toyota effectively quashed the analyst’s expectations, and General Motors is said to have missed forecasts a bit. The outcome was partly due to the chip shortage that is affecting automotive and tech companies worldwide.
In this case, the chip shortage impeded vehicle production to a great extent. And while many carmakers are shutting down production plants that resulted in low yields and unable to fulfill orders, Toyota was able to manage the crisis better than its rivals, and this may have also played a role in the sales results.
“They’ve kind of defied gravity the last couple of months,” Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox Automotive, said. “We’re tracking them having very weak inventories out there and yet their sales have actually held up quite well. We’re really kind of surprised by Toyota’s strength, and having a decent quarter relative to some of the competition.”
It was mentioned that aside from Toyota, the only time that GM was defeated in sales to be the best-selling carmaker for a quarter in the U.S. was when Ford surpassed it during the Great Recession in 1998, and it was in the third quarter of the year.
Running out of cars to sell
Texas News Today reported that many car dealers across the U.S. have run out of new cars to sell due to chip shortages. However, Toyota still has units for the market because it was able to stock semiconductor chips that are needed to assemble a vehicle.
It was noted that since Toyota has a stockpile of the most sought-after chips, the shortage has minimal or just short-term effects on the company. As a result, it was able to produce cars and earn more sales while other brands couldn't.
