Without the pull-ahead of the expiring EV credits from last summer, overall new vehicle sales are expected to be down almost 5% year-over-year for August.
The joint forecast from JD Power and GlobalData expects sales to finish around 1.3 million, showing strong demand remains despite elevated prices.
Driving the news: August 2025 sales were boosted by news of the expiration of the $7,500 Clean Vehicle credits in September. Without that extra incentive, new vehicle sales are projected to be at 1.34 million and retail sales 1.14 million.
The August sales put the seasonally adjusted annualized rate (SAAR) at 16.4 million, around 200,000 behind last year.
Retail SAAR is 13 million.
“Putting aside last year’s results, August 2026 shows continued strong demand for new vehicles, despite concerns around fuel prices and economic uncertainty. In fact, August results would have been even stronger were it not for unusually low availability of hybrid vehicles this month,” said Thomas King, president of OEM solutions at JD Power in a press release.
Digging deeper: To illustrate King’s point, hybrids gained nearly a 5% share compared to last August, hitting an 18.2% share.
While hybrids grew, the EV share dropped by almost the same percentage to 7.2%, and traditional ICE vehicles remain 73% of the market.
“The combination of elevated fuel prices and increased availability of vehicles with hybrid powertrains is driving a shift in the sales mix, with hybrid share of retail sales expected to reach 18.2%, up 4.8 percentage points from last year, despite tight inventory on some of the best-selling hybrid models on the market,” King added.
Record payments: The transaction price for a new vehicle increased 2% year-over-year to $45,563.
Even with a slight reduction in interest rates to 6.55%, the monthly payment hit an August record of $812.
Additionally, the amount of loans with terms of 84 months or longer neared 14%.
“A key driver of the higher monthly payment, despite longer loan terms, is lower trade-in equity. Many of the buyers returning to showrooms today purchased when prices were at their peak several years ago when inventory was scarce,” King noted. “This is manifesting itself as more buyers carrying negative equity on their trade-in. 28.8% of trade-ins had negative equity in August, up 0.6 percentage points from a year ago.”
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Days to sell remain the same: The average days to sale remained at 50 days.
There was a slight increase in the number of vehicles selling within 10 days to 30.9%.
JD Power and GlobalData noted a shift in incentives, trending up by nearly 6% from last year to $3,384 per vehicle.
“Manufacturers are leaning harder into discounts to keep buyers in the market,” King said. “Incentives as a percentage of MSRP are expected to hit 6.6% in August, up 0.3 percentage points from August 2025.”
Bottom line: Sales remain strong, fueled by hybrid demand, entering the fall selling season and the arrival of MY27 vehicles.
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