Persistent chip shortages and problems in supply chains slowed US auto sales towards the end of the year.

The largest US manufacturer General Motors (GM) suffered a particularly severe slump and for the first time in 90 years lost its position as the top-selling provider in its home market.

With around 2.3 million cars sold in the full year of 2021, the Japanese industry giant Toyota sold around 114,000 more new cars to US customers than GM, thus gaining market leadership.

According to its own information on Tuesday, GM had to cope with a sales decline of 43 percent in the final quarter.

Overall, the group sold around 2.2 million cars in the USA in 2021, 13 percent fewer than in the previous year.

Toyota dealt with the chip crisis much better and increased its US sales in 2021 by about ten percent year-on-year.

According to data from the US trade magazine "Automotive News", it is the first time since 1931 that another manufacturer has sold more cars in the US than GM in a calendar year.

Recovery only in the second half of 2022

Of the German manufacturers, only BMW has presented US results for the fourth quarter and the full year so far. The Munich-based company increased sales of its core brand with the three letters on the US market in 2021 by almost 21 percent to 336,644 new cars. In the last three months of the year, however, there was a nearly six percent drop in sales. The BMW subsidiary Mini posted a sales increase of 6.4 percent in the entire past year - despite a minus of eight percent in the last quarter.

Not all manufacturers have published their figures yet - Ford, for example, will do so on Wednesday, Volkswagen on Friday. But it is already clear that many automakers struggled on the US market last year. The industry is hoping for a quick end to the chip crisis, which is severely hampering business despite good demand. However, experts believe that the problems could well last a little longer. “Sales are unlikely to accelerate until the second half of 2022,” says Chris Hopson of the IHS Markit analysis company.

But there is also a clear winner of the crisis year 2021 - and that is Tesla.

While the competition groaned under bottlenecks in the chip supply, the electric car company increased its worldwide sales compared to the previous year by 87 percent.

Overall, Elon Musk's group delivered a good 936,000 e-cars according to information on Sunday - the growth is impressive, but the absolute number compared to established rivals such as Toyota, Volkswagen, GM or Ford is still very low.