Buying a car? Take a hike.
Vehicle buyers have had to travel hundreds of miles to find the rides that they want
When Rachael Kasper started shopping for a new car in August, she had her heart set on a Ford Escape plug-in hybrid. The problem was that Ford hasn’t made many of them this year because of a computer chip shortage that has slowed auto production around the world.
Kasper first came up empty in her home state of Michigan and, later, in neighboring states. When she expanded to the East Coast, she found one — at a dealership 537 miles away, in Hanover, Pennsylvania.
“I flew to Baltimore, took a Lyft to the dealer, and then drove all the way home,” said Kasper, who owns a water-sports equipment retailer. “It was quite an adventure.”
The shortage of computer chips, in large part caused by decisions made in the early days of the pandemic, has rippled through the auto industry this year. Manufacturers have had to close plants for lack of parts, leaving car dealers with millions fewer vehicles to sell.
As a result, car buyers have had to travel hundreds of miles to find the vehicles they want, give up on haggling and accept higher prices, and even snap up used cars that have been repaired after serious accidents.
The end of the year is normally a peak selling season, with some automakers running ads in which cars are presented as gifts complete with bows. But this year, consumers are finding that locating the car of their desires is not quick, easy or cheap.
The disruption to car production has rippled through the automotive world. For a time in the spring and summer of 2020, rental car companies stopped buying new cars and sold many of their vehicles to survive while travel was restricted. Now those companies are seeking to take advantage of a hot rental market and are scrambling to buy cars, often competing with consumers and dealers.
The big discounts and incentives that were standard features of car-buying in the United States have all but disappeared. Instead, some dealers now add an extra $2,000 or $3,000 on top of the list price for new cars. That has left car buyers fuming, but the dealers who are jacking up prices know that if one customer balks, another is usually waiting and willing.
In November, the average price of a new car was a record $45,872, up from $39,984 a year ago, according to Edmunds, an autodata provider. The average price paid for a used car is more than $29,000, up from $22,679 in 2020.
The auto industry’s chip shortage stems from the start of the pandemic, in the spring of 2020, when automakers closed factories for weeks and cut orders for computer chips and other parts. At the same time, homebound consumers were snapping up laptops, game consoles and other electronics, spurring makers of those devices to increase orders for semiconductors. When automakers resumed production, they found chip suppliers had less production capacity for them.
As a result, automakers have produced significantly fewer trucks and cars this year than they had planned. In addition to closing plants, they’ve built vehicles without certain features, such as heated seats and electronics that maximize fuel economy.
Carmakers have said the supply of chips has improved in recent months, but executives expect the components will remain a problem for much of next year.