Hyundai halted fleet deliveries for nine months last year, resuming in October. Fleet sales to customers, such as rental-car companies and local governments, accounted for only 2% of Hyundai sales in 2022.
“We wanted to make sure our dealers were flush with vehicles” during an industrywide, ongoing inventory famine caused by a shortage of microchips, Randy Parker, the company’s CEO says. “It’s not that we don’t love our fleet customers. We felt we owed it to our dealership network to focus on retail.”
Hyundai has 800 dealers in the U.S. and 100 have built new facilities. Another 350 Hyundai dealership construction projects will be completed this year. The inventory shortage is slowly abating, but new issues of concern for the auto industry are rising interest rates and inflation. Those economic factors could hurt sales.
