And Lexus sales decline has nothing to do with product desirability, but the fact TMC suffered the chip shortage one year later than most car manufacturers. I agree Lexus has very few desirable products at present, but it's not directly related to their business performance.
While other car makers had the chip shortage due to poor planning, TMC was sitting on a healthy stockpile through most of last year. But the Renesas fire in March 2021 caused way longer delays than expected (4 months instead of 2 months), and since chip orders usually have a 6-10 months lead time, Toyota started feeling the pain at the end of 2021. A 2-month delay spread over a year is a 1/6 decrease in capacity in the worst case scenario. It was entirely a Black Swan event that no amount of forward planning could avoid. (Well ironically, Black Swan events were so common in the past two years we almost thought they were supposed to be common).
While I respect Hagerty for their incredible quality of content, they are still like many auto journalist, who don't understand how the car industry actually works.
