Following the news of progress on prospective COVID-19 vaccines, attention is turning to prospects for their deployment and subsequent positive economic impacts in 2021; Calum MacRae, Automotive Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“Currently, GlobalData’s base forecast for 2021 stands at 85.1 million global light vehicle sales, some 14.8% up on our projected 2020 total. If the pandemic can be declared over by next spring, we expect a 1.4% lift to those numbers which will increase sales by 1.2 million over the current base.

“That stacks up to forecast sales of 86.4 million light vehicles globally in 2021, still some 2.5 million short of 2019’s pre-pandemic total and far short of 2018’s record 94.3 million.

“In a sector that has been hard hit by the economic fallout from the pandemic, any uplift to demand will be very welcome and the deployment of effective vaccines could even further strengthen the recovery as we progress through the year.

“However, we would caution that with or without vaccines, the fact remains that the auto sector and wider economy have already been deeply impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.

“There’s considerable uncertainty over economic projections for the next eighteen months and the extent of permanent economic damage as a result of the pandemic.”