Korean affiliates Hyundai, Kia and Genesis reported robust U.S. deliveries for February despite ongoing retail headwinds that triggered lower forecasts as automakers struggle to rebuild depleted inventories.
Those headwinds, caused by production cuts stemming from the ongoing semiconductor shortage, didn’t prevent Hyundai from recording an 8 percent gain in U.S. deliveries to 52,424. Sales of the Tucson compact crossover led the way, soaring 37 percent to 12,928 units. The new Ioniq 5 EV generated 2,555 deliveries.
“Our recent marketing efforts with Tucson and Ioniq 5 have worked well to generate awareness in competitive segments,” said Randy Parker, senior vice president of national sales for Hyundai Motor America. “We intend to keep the momentum and market share gains going.”
Hyundai noted it didn’t record any fleet sales. The automaker said U.S. inventories stood at 18,621 units at the end of the month compared with 18,060 at the end of January.
Affiliate Kia posted a 2.3 percent gain to 49,182 deliveries in February as EV sales grew.
“Kia continues to outpace the industry and ‘charge ahead’ with the shift toward electrified vehicles as sales of our range of electric, hybrid and plug-in hybrid models continued to break records and now make up 13-percent of our sales,” Eric Watson, vice president of sales operations for Kia America, said in a statement.
“With first-month sales of the all-electric Kia EV6 exceeding 2,100 units we are confident that even more consumers considering their own shift to electrified vehicles will now consider Kia.”
Luxury brand Genesis said it generated its best February results ever as deliveries rose 45 percent to 3,482 vehicles.
Overall U.S. February results are expected to fall.
Deliveries of new vehicles in February were down an estimated 10 to 11 percent from a year earlier, according to forecasts from Cox Automotive, TrueCar, J.D. Power and LMC Automotive. Retail sales are projected to drop 5.7 percent from February 2021 to 922,100, J.D. Power and LMC said.
Several more automakers such as Toyota and Honda are expected to report monthly results today and Wednesday, but others such as General Motors and Stellantis only report quarterly results.
February is traditionally one of the year’s slower sales months even when inventory is plentiful. But a lack of chips has left little to choose from on dealership lots, and industry experts don’t anticipate that will change anytime soon.
“With retail inventory on pace to finish a fourth consecutive month below 900,000 units and ninth consecutive month below one million units, the new-vehicle supply situation is not displaying signs of near-term improvement,” Thomas King, president of the data and analytics division at J.D. Power, said in a statement. “Therefore, sales in February are being determined by the number of vehicles delivered to dealerships rather than reflecting actual consumer demand.”
