Given persistent consumer affordability challenges, one forecaster doesn’t see the auto industry returning to prepandemic vehicle sales volume, at least not for the rest of the decade. 

A forecast by auto data provider Mobility Global, formerly S&P Global Mobility, foresees 16.1 million units in light-vehicle sales in the U.S. by the end of the year and moving up to just 16.4 million by 2029.  

The expected upward momentum would be far short of the 17 million units or more in annual sales before the Covid pandemic. 

"Obviously, there is something constraining the market from those 17-million-unit thresholds that we routinely hit back in, say, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019,” said Mobility Global Associate Director for Americas Demand Forecasting Peter Nagle. 

The company said the U.S. auto market has been depressed since the global event, partly due to supply shortages. But it sees the inability to return to the sales volume seen in the years before the pandemic as an affordability issue. 

"We don't see the U.S. returning to pre-pandemic levels of volumes," Nagle said. 

Though U.S. regulatory and incentives changes over the past year have resulted in automaker pivots away from previously ambitious electric-vehicle lineup plans, Mobility Global sees fully electric vehicle production exceeding a million units in North America again next year and hybrid vehicle production taking off in a big way. 

The company projects North American hybrid assembly will surpass three million units next year, up a dramatic 25%, and that almost a third of light vehicles built on the continent will be hybrids by 2030.  

Mobility Global forecasters also envision more regionalization in auto production in a retreat from globalization as Asia, North America and Europe become the world’s “regional islands.” 

“…automakers will increasingly have to build where they sell and design for the regions they serve,” said company Director of Research and Analysis Joe Langley. "The difficult part is doing that while costs continue to rise.”