The price tag on vans has jumped more than 22% in the past 9 months – a disproportionate trajectory to other vehicle types during the same period (none of which increased more than 5% during that time).
But, why?
Let’s first take a look at supply
New Van Inventory Growth (%) by Type (August 15 2022 - May 29 2023) | ||||
Van | Car | SUV | Truck | |
+95.5% | +30.6% | +38.5% | +42.2% | |
This data shows vans actually had the biggest supply increase during this period of time. However, it should be noted vans only accounted for about 2% of all new inventory.
In short, previously low supply has remained relatively low.
So, then did vans just get [even] sexier?
Has the demand pendulum swung back to vans (from SUVs and trucks) as the go-to utility vehicle, offering both a practical balance of passenger and cargo needs. In other words, #vanlife?
According to the data, not necessarily.
We dove into our new Foureyes Unified Data Platform, which provides supply and demand data side-by-side. There we found that although van demand (measured as lead volume) has nominally increased during the past 9 months, they still only account for 3% of demand across all body types.
So, the question remains: What’s the deal with vans?
Is it production and materials costs? Dealerships markups attempting to cash in on anecdotal demand narratives? Or something else?
Optimize for supply and demand changes with the Unified Data Platform
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