Despite economic pressures, the new vehicle market continues to show resilience at mid-year 2026, with CarGurus’ mid-year report showing new-vehicle sales are 1.4% behind 2025 through June, while average prices are up 3.3% and inventory is down 1.6%.
Driving the news: Through the first six months of the year, the car market has been tested by several factors, but remains only slightly behind 2025, which featured a pull-ahead of sales with the anticipation of tariffs.
Fuel prices are spiking amid the conflict in the Middle East, reaching above $4.50 per gallon.
New-vehicle prices are hitting $50,900, a 3.3% increase since December.
Interest rates remain elevated, and monthly payments are averaging more than $750.
Zooming in: In an interview with CDG, CarGurus Director of Insights Kevin Roberts called the first half of 2026 a continuation of a trend he’s seen since 2024, with affordability being a key question for consumers.
“Last year we had tariffs, which didn’t actually turn out to be as big of an impact in 2025 as we initially thought and could be a bigger impact in 2026,” Roberts said. “This year, we’ve had oil price increases leading to a general impact and interest rates, which are stretching affordability out further. It’s just a continuation of longer-term trends we’ve been seeing for several years now.”
Pace falls behind population increase: A trend Roberts pointed out in the report was that the new sales are not keeping pace with the population.
From 2000 to 2002, more than 60 vehicles per 1,000 people were sold.
The pace bottomed out at less than 35 during 2009 during the Great Recession.
The current pace is around 45.
“We’re not selling as many new vehicles per person as we were in 2000, and that obviously has downstream effects as you start to look into the used-vehicle industry,” Roberts explained.
Other new-vehicle trends: Since 2021, the percentage of new vehicles under $35,000 has dropped below 50%
Now, only roughly a quarter of new vehicles are below the $35,000 threshold.
More than 40% are priced above $50,000.
And tariffs are adding to costs, with an average cost of $3,676 per imported vehicle.
Used-vehicle lane: As of June, the average price difference between new and used vehicles is $21,000.
Units 7 years and older make up more 40% of the demand.
Sales of vehicles with 60K+ miles are up 16% since 2020, and make up roughly 48% of the market.
Of vehicles over 100K miles, the Ford F-150 with an average of 122K miles from 2016 is listed at $20,600.
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EV interest slows: Peaking when gas prices topped $4.50, interest in EVs on CarGurus has dropped with gas prices back under $4.
New EV sales dropped from a 4.9% share in May to 4.7% in mid-June.
Hybrid sales fell from 14.8% to 14.3% from the end of May to the middle of June.
The sales of new hybrids are up 18.8% YOY, and used models 34.3%.
“Hybrids are definitely seeing the growth that we expected EVs to have if you go back a couple of years, when all the investments were going into EVs,” Roberts said.
Bottom line: Moving into the second half of 2026, there is still some uncertainty about whether the Federal Reserve will increase rates, how USMCA negotiations will impact tariffs, and where gas prices will land.
“It’s such a dynamic situation,” Roberts said.
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