In Tuesdays announcement, the company maintained a third quarter production forecast of 640,000 vehicles, and increased their fourth quarter production forecast by 6% hoping to produce another 640,000 cars and trucks by the end of this year.
These results are consistent with those obtained using methods that generalize the US light-duty vehicle fleet, but are not a forecast of future vehicle attributes because combinations of less perceptible changes to vehicle price, acceleration and size would also be feasible.
G.M. is still holding to its industry forecast of 15.7 million vehicles for the year.
Daniel F. Akerson, the chairman and chief executive of General Motors, expressed skepticism earlier this week that total new-car sales, across brands, in the United States this year would reach the company's forecast of 13 million vehicles.
For planning purposes up to 2025, based on historical data, the Grey model is used for the needed POP and GDP forecasts, and four ANNs (artificial neural network) are designed and used for forecasts of VP (vehicle population), TV (traffic volume), VKT (average private vehicles kilometers traveled/capita), and GC up to 2025.
G.M. has not given a forecast for the number of vehicles it expects to produce or sell in 2008.
They say the effort will help support a forecast of increased e-vehicle (EV) use.
Its sales there are running ahead of schedule, and the company, which had already raised its 2010 forecast from 100,000 vehicles to 120,000 vehicles, is certain to surpass even the higher estimate, Mr. Robertson said.
It raised its global sales forecast to 7.18m vehicles from 7.03m vehicles for the full year.
It raised its annual sales forecast by 135,000 vehicles to 3.435 million vehicles.
IHS forecasts that the average age of vehicles will remain about the same through 2015, then rise to 11.5 years by 2017 and 11.7 years by 2019.
