State auto sales regaining speed after 2020 tailspin

Hawaii auto dealers are revving up for an uphill climb in 2021 after sales spun out of control and plunged nearly 20% last year.

New vehicle registrations are forecast to rise about 8% this year but still fall shy of the 50,000-sales threshold it reached for six straight years until 2020, according to a report due out today from Hawaii Auto Outlook.

“It seems certain that the state new vehicle market will improve in 2021, but pinpointing the magnitude of the increase is tricky,” Jeffrey Foltz, editor of Hawaii Auto Outlook, wrote in the quarterly report. “There is some risk that the virus drags on during 2021, and worst case, that additional business closures and restrictions are needed. These downsides should not be significant enough to push the market lower, but could hold back the rate of growth.”

Foltz, who produced the report for the Hawaii Automobile Dealers Association, forecast that registrations will reach 49,750 this year after falling 19.6% last year to 46,064 from 57,323 in 2019. The last time registrations had dipped below the 50,000 mark was in 2013, when there were 48,705 registrations. Registrations in the fourth quarter were down 14.2% to 11,058 from 12,890 in the year-earlier period.

While new vehicle registrations can be representative of auto sales, the two don’t always align because a buyer can purchase a vehicle one month and register it in another month. The data is based on county Department of Motor Vehicles registrations.

Given the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought auto sales to a screeching halt, he said last year’s results could have been worse. Unemployment hit an all-time high of 23.8% in April as thousands of people were put out of work due to businesses shutting down. And there was less use for cars and driving as more people worked from home and students transitioned to virtual learning.

But as the vaccine began to roll out toward the end of the year and the economy started to reopen, things started looking up. The unemployment rate of 9.3% in December was the lowest for any month since the onset of COVID-19, and that is likely to improve this year. In addition, low interest rates and pent-up demand are expected to give a boost to sales, Foltz said. And the impetus for vehicle ownership has been given a boost in the minds of many vehicle shoppers as people can travel in their own “personal space” rather than rely on public transportation or ride-hailing, where there may be more of a risk of contracting the virus, he added.

“2020 was not a good year for the state new vehicle market, but it could have been worse,” he said. “The decline was significant, but the state market fared better than expected. When the pandemic started last spring, an annual decline of greater than 30% seemed possible. The fact that the market out-­performed expectations is a positive sign.”

Still, the damage was felt statewide in all four island markets. Maui sales fell 24%, Kauai sales tumbled 20.3%, Oahu sales fell 19.2% and Hawaii island sales declined 17.9%. But in a sign of the times where more people are looking at ditching their gas guzzlers for electric vehicles, the market share of EVs in Hawaii last year rose to 4.9% from 4.2% in 2019.

Light trucks (which include vans, SUVs and pickups) also maintained their dominating lead over cars with a 72% market share versus 28% for cars. More consumers are opting for the larger vehicles because of more visibility, additional room for storage and stable gas prices.

But the report noted that the industry’s classification of light trucks can be misleading because many subcompact and compact SUVs, such as the Buick Encore and the Honda CR-V, are essentially passenger cars with a hatchback, a higher center of gravity and more ground clearance. The report said by removing crossover utility vehicles, or CUVs, from light trucks that the true truck market share in the state during 2020 was 43.8%. That means the total number of passenger cars and small CUVs accounted for a larger share of the vehicle market in Hawaii in 2020.

Toyota was the bestselling brand in Hawaii in 2020 with a 24.8% market share, followed by Honda at 13.3%, Nissan at 7.7%, Ford at 7.6% and Chevrolet at 5.3%.

The market share for the top-selling models in the state last year were Toyota Tacoma, 7.6%; Toyota 4Runner, 3.9%; Toyota RAV4, 3.9%; Toyota Corolla, 3.2%; and Honda CR-V, 2.9%.

The top-selling compact SUVs were Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, Subaru XV Crosstrek, Subaru Forester and Jeep Wrangler.

“The outlook for 2021 is encouraging,” Foltz said. “Many of the same factors that led to last year being better than predicted should provide strength for the foreseeable future. Consumer affordability is strong, pent up demand is significant, federal government stimulus will provide a boost, and the virus has heightened the desirability for vehicle ownership.”