“What’s wild this year is that we expect 159 [car] models to be launched over the next four years,” Bank of America senior auto analyst John Murphy said this week at an event in Detroit. “Last year, it was over 200. Traditionally, it’s over 200,” (over a four-year span). If automotive product news has seemed a little slow, you weren’t imagining things. Among all the shake-ups we’re perceiving in the global economy right now, a stark reduction in new cars coming out is a very real one.
Bank of America does an annual auto industry forecast report called “Car Wars.” This year’s will be presented on June 21. But Murphy, effectively the face of the program, teased the quote above and a few other nuggets in a smaller presentation on Wednesday.
He also noted that there are 29 new car models coming out in 2025 “and that’s the lowest number we’ve had in decades,” according to Automotive News. He went on to connect that slowdown to the industry’s rapid pullback on electric cars. “This is really an indication that a lot of what’s been going on with EV investment and distractions otherwise that have really pulled product planning in many, many different directions. What you’re seeing is the push out and cancellation of numerous models, mostly in EVs.”
“Distractions” is an interesting word choice there. As recently as a year ago, all anybody kept telling me was that electric cars are the future. But in 2025, regulations are snapping back to favor gas guzzling, and innovative products that were showered in praise, like the electric Mercedes G, are now being roasted by their own companies. So I guess, yeah, the R&D that gave us the tank turn does look a bit like a distracting sidequest in the rearview mirror.
Clearly, Murphy doesn’t seem to think electric cars will be a growth area in the near future, considering changing legislation and slow sales. “I think 8 percent might be the high-water mark for EVs in the U.S., at least for the next four or five years … And it may prove to be the high-water mark total.”
The Detroit News reports that Bank of America predicts 71 EV models coming through in the next four years, “about half of what the forecast had expected two years ago.”
There’s more empirical context on this that’s been shared around on mainstream media and industry publications this week, but it basically boils down to: Fewer new cars are coming out, by a huge margin, and that’s going to affect everybody from automakers to suppliers to marketers to dealers and everyone else who’s paycheck is powered by cars being updated.
I’d like to think that longer waits between model changes would mean, at least, we’ll see bigger leaps in technology and performance when things do get updated. But candidly, I think automotive technology peaked around the turn of the millennium and now we’re just watching car companies figure out how to cut costs.
Now I don’t mean to sneak a hot take in here, but from where I’m sitting, the only category of cars that’s made the most meaningful, practical, and useful advances since about 2015 is EVs. That said, I also understand why people aren’t buying them—they’re expensive, and if you don’t have home charging, they’re just a little too inconvenient for what they cost.
We’ll have to wait until June 21 to get the full download on Bank of America’s car-industry forecast, but Automotive News did share one more interesting takeaway from this week’s “Car Wars” teaser. Murphy thinks the crossover market is finally saturated. He said other light truck and small-car segments would be the ones to expand in the near future. Maybe the tanking economy has a silver lining after all: a potential comeback for smaller vehicles.
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