
Cars sell out for 2nd week in a row as U.S. economy slows
Cars are still selling out, but a big part of the industry is starting to slow down, and the number of people who have the right kind of car is dwindling.
More than 700,000 vehicles were sold last week, a record.
But car sales have been flat for a year, and experts are warning that the economy is slowing down even as it gains momentum.
“I think it’s going to take at least another two weeks of the normal recovery before we can really see the gains we were expecting,” said Jim Dickey, senior vice president of sales for the National Automobile Dealers Association.
He added that many automakers have already been canceling the vehicles they are selling.
The U.K. car market is struggling as the government is pushing up taxes on high-value cars.
Some experts say that, in a downturn, automakers should be preparing for an even bigger crash.
“We are not going to have the kind of recovery that we had before the recession,” said Dickey.
And that means that the U.N. climate change conference in Paris is also likely to get a lot less interesting.
U.
S auto sales were down by about 40 percent last year and now stand at a near record low of 1.6 million vehicles.
It is hard to see the United States getting much worse off in the years ahead, though.
As part of a plan to lower emissions, the government last week ordered automakers to start buying cleaner cars, including plug-in hybrids and electric cars.
Automakers must comply with the regulations by March 1.