by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
For automakers, this was a tough market before the Pandemic: decades of stagnation in unit sales, carved up by more competitors, with industry revenue growth by jacking up prices. Then came the Pandemic.
The average age of passenger cars and trucks on the road in the US – light “vehicles in operation” or VIO – rose to another record of 11.9 years in 2020, according to IHS Markit. But this doesn’t yet include the effects of the Pandemic on the auto industry. We’ll get to that in a moment: