The car shopping experts at Edmunds forecast that 4,468,791 new cars and trucks will be sold in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2021, which reflects a 51.6% increase from the second quarter of 2021 and a 14.8% increase compared to the first quarter of this year.

“New vehicle sales in the second quarter started off with a bang in April thanks to a combination of a speedier-than-anticipated vaccine rollout and many Americans itching to jump into a new vehicle and on the road toward some semblance of normal life,” said Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ executive director of insights. “Unfortunately, the chipset and inventory shortages really came to a head and outstripped supply in June. This isn’t a problem that’s going away anytime soon, but the silver lining for automakers and dealers in the meantime is that consumer demand continues to run high and shoppers are clearly willing to pay inflated prices for the vehicles that they want.”