United States based General Motors Co was beaten by Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp in terms of sale of its vehicles in the US market for the first nine months of the current year, partly because of the Detroit automaker struggling to ramp up production of its cars because of issues resulting from the global semiconductor chip shortage.

1.86 million vehicles were sold by Toyota in the U.S. during the first nine months od of 2021 compared to 1.78 million of GM, which means the Japanese company sold a little over 80,000 vehicles more than the American auto maker, showed data released on Friday.

According to data from industry publication Automotive News, since 1931, GM has successfully retained the cap of being the largest seller of vehicles in the United States. It gained that accolade by squeezing past Ford Motor Co.

The global chip crisis has hit GM hard. The company has however said that production at regular capacity would be done at most of its North American plants from next week.

According to data from Automotive News, the third-quarter US sales of GM plummeted by more than 33 per cent to only 446,997 vehicles, which marked the company’s lowest sales quarter in more than a decade. For the first nine months, sales of GM were up 0.1 per cent. Its shares, which have increased in value by more than one-fourth so far this year, finished up 0.8 per cent on Friday.

Toyota, the largest auto manufacturer by volume in the world, said that its sales in the US market had increased 1.4 per cent to 566,005 vehicles during the third quarter of the current year and were higher by 27.9 per cent year on year in the first nine months of the current year.

“We certainly wish we had a few more semiconductors and I bet Toyota wishes they had a few more pickups and SUVs. Nobody should be making long-term judgments about the market” on the basis of the sales numbers that was impacted by the chip crisis, said GM spokesman Jim Cain on Friday,

According to a Toyota spokeswoman, the 2021 US sales statistics are an aberration because to the chips problem, and the auto manufacturer stressed that it has never been interested on becoming No. 1 in terms of sales.

Chips are used in car entertainment systems, and the epidemic has increased chip demand as more people work from home and rely on smartphones and other devices.

GM sold 2.55 million automobiles in the United States in 2020, compared to Toyota’s 2.11 million, which was ahead of Ford’s 2.04 million.

There was a drop of 10 per cent in the US sales of Nissan for the quarter while a 19 per cent fall in the sale of Chrysler parent Stellantis was reported for the same period in the US.  

(Adapted from ChannelNewsAsia.com)