Following the recent news that Ford is expected to halt production for two weeks in April due to chip shortages, and given our recent study on this exact subject few months back we wanted to take a closer look and quantify how the largest US carmakers and the industry as a whole is currently affected. Employee counts are often times the right metric produced by our foot traffic data to analyze industrial companies.

One year after the initial lockdowns and stay at home orders across the groble, Americans are now driving a lot more, as measured by our miles driven index. More specifically, the last three weeks Advan’s miles driven index captured an increase in traffic as high as 40% nationwide compared to the pre-pandemic levels in February 2020. As the vaccines are being rolled out people’s confidence is picking up and in combination with certain COVID-related restrictions being lifted and the advent of Spring and Spring breaks, everyone seems to be making up for lost travel.

After the lockdown last spring that forced manufacturers from all sectors to halt production, auto makers now have to face another challenge: the global chip shortage due to the high demand on consumer electronics (laptops, gaming consoles, TVs etc.). The increased need for the technology devices along with the initial lockdowns and employee furloughs overwhelmed chipmakers and now are struggling to keep up with the surge in orders. Another factor was the faster than anticipated recovery in the second half of 2020 as several manufacturers in the sector ramped up the car production to rebound from the spring’s shutdowns and increase the chance of hitting the year’s target.

What does a COVID recovery look like for businesses? 6 months after the initial lock-down we know that, in the US, the journey has been remarkably different for different types of businesses. Our foot traffic indices capture trends that show just how varied the path has been. We looked at the percentage change in foot traffic for 5 different sectors during each month of this year. Starting in March, of those we analyzed, the sectors most quickly impacted were clothing & accessories.

Recovery in Foot Traffic Levels at Car Dealerships Most Pronounced in Red States Like many other sectors, the US car industry saw a sharp downturn in business when lock-down orders and business closures were at their peak in late March and April. Combined sales in April 2020 for the Big 3 US carmakers - GM, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler - were down 63% compared to the previous year according to GoodCarBadCar.net.

Foot Traffic to Truck Stops Rebounds Post Lock-down A recent article on Wall Street Journal by Peter Grant took an insightful look at how truck stops in the US have been boosted this year, in part due to the increase in demand for e-commerce and delivery. Travel Centers of America (NASDAQ: TA), the largest publicly listed operator of truck stops in the US, saw its share price increase 50% following its quarterly earning announcement in early August.

The RV market in the US looks like it may have found a new client base during the pandemic. As reported by the New York Times , companies like Cruise America, the largest RV rental company in the US, typically count on overseas visitors for about 40% of their bookings. The majority of these visitors usually come from Europe and with borders closing, rentals fell steeply. Foot traffic to rental locations was down over 40% in April compared to the previous year.

In this third blog post of our summer series, we review two different measures of economic activity that can help paint an overall picture of consumer trends. Measuring foot traffic at consumer discretionary businesses helps us understand the extent to which people are back to shopping for non-essentials - an indicator for increasing flexibility of movement and confidence in the outlook. During April and May there was a massive year-over-year drop in visits to non-essential locations.

One of the interesting things you can do with access to anonymized, large scale and accurate cellphone location data, is to measure traffic patterns. Consistent with the Big Data theme, we decided to compute this across the whole US, to measure Total Miles Driven. Total Miles Driven is estimated by the Federal Government (aka “FRED”) in a monthly report, which is generated with about a 35 day delay (e.g., the September total miles driven is published in early November).

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