About what he's going to decide to do with, you know, China tariffs and see how that goes. You know, we all sit around shaking our heads, looking at the President of the United States, you know, defending kind of 19th-century steel and aluminum, while jobs and industries, while really eschewing, you know, the technologies of the 21st century. If someone wants to buy me a glass of wine, I'm happy to wax on this as long as anybody wants.
We think it's, you know, damaging, you know, not just, you know, not just, you know, to the United States, but certainly globally, you know, we've got tariffs on friends and foes, you know, being turned on and off, you know, variable application. It's, you know, on one day, off the next. You know, the problem, you know, for freight haulers, the folks who are buying, the products for whom most of the folks on this call are making parts for, you know, we had a freight pull forward, you know, up until, through the first quarter. And, you know, if you pull forward freight, you can change the timing of demand, but you can't change aggregate demand.
You know, there's a payback inbound, you know, because the, you know, kind of the easing of tariffs or the lessening of the threat of tariffs, at least temporarily, on the EU and China, you know, we think is driving a smaller wave of pull forward. Really, as we look out to the third quarter, we think there's some real problems with the freight market, and there were already problems in the freight market, at least, problems with carrier profitability in the freight markets, you know, coming into 2025 that have been exacerbated by policy. You know, we do expect inflation to reaccelerate in the second half of the year.
The trend has been broadly positive so far this year, but we expect that to change in the second half. You look at those interest rate-sensitive sectors like manufacturing and housing, are already very soft. Inflation and Fed unwillingness to ease interest rates in the face of that inflation are certainly not helpful. As Zita and John's presentations both indicated, we are looking at a really seismic shock to the global geopolitical foundations. The Western hegemony, if you will, of conducting trade in an orderly fashion has, since World War II, really been thrown out the window.
You know, if there's a silver lining in looking at, you know, especially the U.S. economy, but the North American economy more broadly, is, you know, there was really a kind of broad-based strength in the economy. You know, the manufacturing sector was doing well. Consumers are doing well. You know, disposable income was good. Wealth was high. So the economy really came into 2025 with strong tailwinds. And so, you know, there was that kind of underlying support. Employment levels have been healthy, again, allowing for at least some strength in income growth and demographics and deportations.
You know, again, we shake our heads around here, are going to keep labor supply at fairly tight. So, you know, especially, you know, at this point where, you know, we're looking at our industry cutting labor, when we do finally get to the turn in the cycle, it's going to be into an extremely challenging labor market. Tax cuts could be beneficial, and, you know, I just hate to even sound like Donald Trump when I say the big, beautiful bill that's currently working its way through Congress. I think, you know, the issue is, the tax cuts of 2018 are going to be sunsetting next year.
Congress, if they want to, again, blow a hole in the deficit, they need to, you know, reinstall those tax cuts. And those tax cuts are, you know, not stimulative in a sense that it's that they're more just a continuation of existing policy. We don't think there's a lot of help in the big, beautiful bill to drive the economy forward faster. The last bullet point here is, and I think, you know, Jay Powell at the Federal Reserve has indicated that, you know, even the Federal Reserve and their, you know, hundreds or thousands of economists are unsure whether this is a, you know, just a transitory thing.
We recognize that Jay Powell, you know, does have problems with the word transitory, or he did a few years ago, or whether this is more structural and challenging. You know, we would reference, you know, Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations. You know, 249 years ago, he indicated that the countries that apply tariffs tend to get hurt the worst. Certainly, that is our sentiment. The Blue Chip Survey, this is a 60-company economic consensus survey that is done once a month. This is the one that was conducted at the beginning of June. Just kind of going through some of the high-level numbers here.
Probability of recession. The average was 41% for the U.S., 42% for the Euro area. You know, if we, if we went back to pre-April 2022 levels, you know, the consensus is still 35%. So, you know, most economists are looking and saying, you know, some significant damage has been done. We'll, you know, tariff policies boost inflation. 60% thought a one-time increase in prices. Another 38%, you know, believe a longer-lasting pickup in inflation. If you add these together, you end up with 102%. So, clearly, clearly there's some challenge in rounding or 101%. So clearly some challenges in rounding here. And then finally, the probability of your U.S. experiencing stagflation, which is, you know, a stagnant economy and high inflation. And the consensus is around 60%.
So, really, you know, some of the best economists in the United States are seeing this as a significant problem for economic activity going forward. Many years ago we created a, you know, an indicator of indicators, if you will. This is our U.S. Class eight Tractor Dashboard. And, you know, for context, I think U.S. Class eight tractor is about 45% of the North American market. So, you know, kind of the single largest segment of the market. What we do here is we take 15 variables, five macro, five freight-related, and five industry-related metrics. And we've got, you know, good and bad signals.
You can get a one, a minus one, or a zero, depending on whether it's positive, neutral, or negative. And, you know, if you just really pay attention to the top line, you can see that, you know, through the second half of 2024, it was, you know, we went from, you know, very negative as late as September, but, you know, kind of significant improvement in that October through January period. Then as these tariffs were introduced and, you know, as orders started to break down in the industry, we've seen a reversal in the dashboard from a minus four in January to a minus eight in April. Unfortunately, that's our last bullet point at this point.
I probably could have updated this, but no, never mind. We'll just stop there. Anyway, you know, we did this. It was designed to predict, you know, demand turns in U.S. Class eight tractor. Clearly, you know, the weak trend is not supported by our, again, indicator of indicators. Anybody that's ever seen me present has probably seen me present this slide. What we do is we take the, I guess I'll take a step back and say, you know, the point of this slide is the notion that when fleets make money, they buy vehicles. What we have here, the black line on this chart is the publicly traded truckload carriers in the United States.
You know, every quarter, in their financial reporting, we've got 12 companies that are running about 100,000 vehicles, and these are some of the best companies in trucking in the United States. You know, J.B. Hunt, Knight Transportation, Werner, Schneider, you know, kind of if there are household name trucking companies in the United States, these are them. You know, you can see, since the first quarter of 2022, when these guys on a seasonally adjusted basis made about 10% net profit margins, in the first quarter of 2025, that was all the way down to 2.7%.
If you follow that yellow line across the chart, you can see the last time the industry had 2.7% net profit margins was the first quarter of 2010. You know, so really, generational lows in carrier profitability. That is the black line on the chart. The red line on the chart is U.S. Class eight tractor production. You know, the point of the chart is, you know, there is a very close correlation between carrier profitability and the industry's need to produce vehicles. We did have some displacement of demand in 2021 and 2022 due to the semiconductor shortage. We had pent-up demand going into 2023, and we believe by the end of 2023, that was largely sated.
At the beginning of 2024, we still have this very wide gap between carrier profitability and where carrier profitability would historically guide production. I think what profitability levels are at this point is what they are currently saying, that kind of that 45% of the market that is U.S. Class eight tractor should be somewhere around 100,000 units as opposed to the 145,000 in our forecast. That is kind of the pessimism. This has been our Donald Trump story, and you can just see the demand destruction that has occurred since the beginning of the year.
You know, I will preface comments here saying, you know, back when we were, you know, our economics team was working back in December and January, really the high-level debate was, you know, should GDP be 2% in 2025, or should U.S. GDP be 2.5% in 2025? You know, you can see the consensus was, or our chief economist said it's going to be 2.1%. You know, our freight metric was growing at 2.7%. You can kind of, you know, track the progress, kind of down, down 40 basis points in March, down 80 basis points in April.
We were in a forecasting week, the week that Liberation Day was, tariffs were announced. That was the peak of pessimism. You know, we've since seen the forecast come back up to about 1.6% for this year, 1.7%, oh, 1.7% for next year. If I can do this without, or yeah, 1.6 for this year and 1.6% for this year. I think importantly, when we're looking at the freight market, you can see that we've taken about 110 basis points out of freight expectations this year from 2.7% to 1.6% at this point. We've seen about a 150 basis point pullback in freight markets for 2026, based on our current expectations.
That is being driven by the expectation that inflation is going to rebound and interest rates are going to remain high, thereby keeping pressure on some of these key freight generating sectors in the market. You can see our Class eight build forecast. We have basically pulled all expectations of a pre-buy out of our 2026 forecasts ahead of EPA 2027 or the low NOx standard, as we think there are really two ingredients to pre-buying. You know, first you have to have a willingness, and we do believe that the price of a truck in 2027, as the regulations currently stand, will increase by around 12%. So certainly there is a willingness on the part of carriers to pull some demand forward.
But, you know, kind of the second component of, you know, the ingredients for pre-buy is ability. And as I just illustrated, carriers are not making money right now and, you know, kind of underlying trends aren't good. We'll touch on that a little bit more. You can maybe tell I've got North America Class six, seven truck builds, as opposed to Classes four through seven or a total Class six, seven either. You might guess the OEM to whom I was presenting yesterday. And, you know, really as we look across just the last five months, you can see the big drawdown.
You know, we have learned things in the past, you know, over the course of this week that we think that, well, there is consideration, and slides are perhaps out of order for this, but there is consideration as to what the status of the EPA clean truck low NOx regulation will be. I, you know, we might be pushing our North America expectations for Class eight production up a little bit for 2026 from current levels. Certainly, we do not believe we are, unless there is a drastic change in the administration's policy towards trade, you know, we find it very hard to think that there will be a three at the start of the Class 8 forecast for 2026.
Turning to demand, as I said, if we could have one indicator to help us predict U.S. tractor demand or tractor demand generally, it's whether carriers are making money or not. We pay a lot of attention to the freight markets. As I mentioned, we've got the pre-tariff freight pull forward has, or is going to, turn into payback. The problem on supply, I think the good news is the U.S. truckers have stopped digging the hole by continuing to add capacity. We're actually, since the beginning of this year, starting to see a little bit of contraction in the Class 8 fleet.
So, you know, that's going to help the situation. If you've got demand heading lower and you've got supply tightening, you end up with kind of a neutral balance. We need to see supply tighten and demand head higher for things to really work well. The question really comes on, for us, as when are truckers going to start making more money? As things stand, if we look over the past three or four quarters, we've seen spot freight rates, and the spot market is only about 15% of the overall U.S. freight market, but those rates are only up about 3%.
Contract rates are up about 1% on a year-over-year basis. You know, the problem is inflation is running, you know, over 2%. As we think about that chart, you know, showing carrier profitability, what the data suggests to us anyway is that carriers are not, are still not seeing any traction on profitability. Just touching on that, on the left-hand side, you can see that tractor retail sales number falling below our, you know, fat replacement band there. Again, you know, like I intimated, you know, the first rule of holes is to stop digging. By not adding capacity into the market, there has been, you know, the digging has subsided.
You know, we take a subset of the tractor population. This is 13 and under, you know, our, in quotes, prime age, Class 8 tractor population, about 1.7 million units. You can see, after some very big fleet growth from 2022 through the end of 2024, we're finally seeing some subsistence in that fleet growth for the next few years based on our forecasts.
You know, turning to, and I think, you know, I just made some of these comments, but, you know, as we look to leading indicators of, you know, when carriers are going to make money, we, you know, there's a company called DAT that does a, they're a load board, and they provide some fairly interesting data into the market. This is their load to truck ratio, which leads spot rates by two or three weeks. Spot rates lead contract rates by about five months. Contract rates are, you know, where the rubber hits the road in terms of carrier profitability.
You know, as you can see, the black line, which is that load to truck ratio, has plunged in recent weeks, as we saw the subsistence of that freight pull forward through the first quarter. You know, the blue line is that spot rate, which is basically the same place it has been for most of the last three years. Still, tough times for truckers.
Our forecast for spot rates, with demand in question and, you know, even with supply coming out, modestly coming out of the market, we just do not see where we are going to get that inflection in the rate environment as we look through the end of 2025. If there is no improvement in rates as we move through the summer and we get back into a stronger freight season, it is hard to see, at least immediately at the end of the year, that we would see kind of a sizable move in order activity as the OEMs open their 2026 order books.
As you see in 2026, our expectation for freight rates remains, you know, quite muted. Turning to industry fundamentals, labor cuts are being announced across the industry. You know, as I indicated earlier, the challenge there, you know, is not in the short term, but it is, you know, more into the medium term, which is when the market does turn around, it is going to turn around into a labor constrained market, which is, you know, somewhat akin to what the industry experienced back in 2021 and 2022 as they were trying to ramp up production into a labor constrained market back a few years ago. You know, we do have, you know, some uncertainties that we did not have at the beginning of the year.
You know, the first is EPA regulations and specifically the NOx regulation. Our expectation is, well, our expectation is probably we aren't going to know anything of what the administration plans to do until the end of the third quarter, you know, kind of keeping uncertainty dialed up to 11 for truckers. I think, you know, for the vocational truck buyers, though, I think kind of the stronger for longer thesis for 2025 was the vocational truck market. There was very good, very good down the road sight, construction markets were doing very well.
You know, there was a lot of stimulus money out for years to come from the Biden era, you know, stimulus packages, and those have been frozen. Just, you know, again, massive uncertainty in the marketplace for carriers who are making big commitments or being asked to make big, big commitments or decisions into a very difficult environment to make those decisions. Tariffs, especially the 232 tariffs, are already driving prices higher. At the end of May, early June, we saw about a 2.5% price increase go into effect for vehicles. Our understanding is the beginning of July, we're going to see another 2.5% price increase.
Not only are carriers not making money, the price of vehicles is rising as the year goes by. As Zita indicated, and as these deadlines on June 8 and June 9, and August 9 suggest, prices could be materially higher from even the 5% price increase that we're expecting into the middle of this year. Turning to the markets, if we're looking at the heavy duty market specifically, the question is who's buying, as mentioned, for higher carrier profits are the lowest since the global financial crisis.
Private fleets have spent the last two years, and, you know, kind of the surprising strength in the marketplace the past few years have been private fleets. Private fleets are what we would define as companies who are hauling their own freight, as opposed to companies that are hauling freight for money. You know, those fleets have really added a lot of capacity in the past couple of years. They have taken market share from the for-hire market, and they have really, in adding that capacity, reduced their fleet age. You know, we are looking at record Class eight inventories. Dealers have stock on their lots. You know, bodybuilders have stock on their lots. You know, interest rates are high, so floor planning is expensive.
So, you know, with record inventories right now, it's very difficult to see, and given conditions, it's difficult to see, you know, dealers wanting to add a lot of capacity at this point. You know, for the medium duty market, it's, you know, very, very similar set of conditions. You know, dealers and bodybuilders are sitting on near record Class eight or medium duty inventories. You know, inflationary policies are keeping interest rates high. The small buyers are checking out of the market. I think, you know, the leasing companies have added a lot of capacity in the past few years. You know, what we're hearing is leasing company utilization rates are relatively low right now.
You know, kind of the biggest buyers in the medium duty market are also, you know, kind of on pause. Just touching on fleet age quickly before we get into, you know, kind of current conditions. If we look at the tractor market, which is the blue line on the left-hand side, you can see the lower volumes in the next few years are, you know, quickly normalizing, fleet age up to around six years and, you know, kind of in line with the long-term average for the vocational market. You know, we've really had a renaissance in vocational truck demand over the past four or five years. As a result, excuse me, we've seen fleet age come down quickly.
And actually at present, we're looking at, you know, vocational fleet age at, you know, levels, you know, not seen really since we started collecting vocational truck data. You know, we got close a few times, but, you know, a very young vocational fleet. If there is a silver lining in the North American market and, you know, we're talking about, you know, difficulties in the short term, certainly. As we look out over the next, you know, or through the forecast horizon, you know, we've been kind of stuck on 240,000 units per year as a replacement number.
You can see that replacement number as we move to the end of the decade rising around 10% to kind of 265,000 units, 265,000-270,000 units. You know, still a growth industry here and, you know, while there's not good news in the near term, certainly there's something to be encouraged by as we look to the long term and certainly, you know, really underscores the need for very strong planning as the industry navigates into the 2030s. You know, turning to what's going on now, I think you can see what happened, what's been going on in orders.
This is a quarterly order SARS, you know, for the medium duty market, breakout for tractors and trucks for Class 8 and trailers. You know, you kind of look down these columns of numbers and, you know, you can see the crushing of demand that's been going on in April. I think everybody was liberated from making decisions, because, you know, again, uncertainty was high. You know, if uncertainty was a true, it was the key word for our drinking game, you know, everybody would be on probably about their seventh or eighth shot at this point.
And then of course in May, we saw a very weak, you know, kind of dead cat bounce in orders. You know, the three-month average is now down to, you know, the worst it's been since, you know, kind of the beginning of the pandemic. You know, not a lot of encouragement, you know, 155,000 unit April-May SAR for heavy duties and 173,000 unit SAR for medium duties. You know, discouraging stuff. Just looking at, you know, taking a look at a picture of backlogs.
You know, I've got the, you know, Class eight on the left and medium duty, or at least the six and seven piece of medium duty broken out between trucks and buses. On the right-hand side, you can see buses are holding up somewhat better. You know, I think, you know, schools did not buy a lot of buses in 2021 and 2022. I think there is an argument that there could still be some pent-up demand, especially in the school bus market in the U.S., as we move through 2025 and into 2026. The picture that nobody in the industry wants to see, which is just, you know, inventories.
You know, we did have a correction in tractor inventories on the upper left-hand corner, at the, you know, kind of starting in the middle of last year as inventories were getting out of control. Of course, what the OEMs did is, you know, to keep line rates moving into the end of 2024, they flipped the switch on tractors and flipped off the switch on tractors and flipped on the switch on vocational trucks. You can see vocational truck inventories start shooting higher almost immediately as tractor inventory starts coming down. We are seeing some improvement in the medium duty inventories. You know, the heavier end of medium duty is just off peak.
Class 5 inventories are a little farther along. If you look at the inventory to sales ratios, the only one that's even modestly close to its historical average is the Class eight tractor market. The others are something like 50% higher than they should be. As the text box says, Class 8 inventories, on a kind of long-term average inventory to sales ratio, were about 36,000 units too high at the end of May. That Class six, 7 inventory was about 15,000 units too high, as I believe is the Class five inventory. Considerable work needs to be done to rationalize inventories, which is kind of one more headwind for production as we look through the short term.
I've touched a lot on regulations at this point. You know, we're five plus years into a seven-year planning cycle for the EPA's low NOx clean truck rule. On March 12th, the EPA indicated that they were re-evaluating the rule. I think every trucker, when Lee Zeldin said reevaluating, they heard no rule. I think that has gone to becoming a really massive headwind for any planning that truckers might be doing. I think especially for the vocational market, our understanding is this can't go through Congress. The Congress can't use a CRA to get rid of this regulation.
It actually has to go through the EPA to vacate it. Our understanding also is we do not expect a ruling on this reevaluation of what the Trump administration plans to do with EPA's low NOx regulation until the end of September. This is, you know, not only don't we know anything, we're not going to know anything for another three plus months. You know, as the little dot says, this really makes fleet planning around the regulation virtually impossible. We do expect GHG3, if not to be vacated, to be heavily rewritten and pushed out.
And, you know, we'll find out, I suspect also at the end of September what the plan is here. In summary, before, you know, passing the baton, circling back around to basically say what I've said, recession odds have increased, uncertainty raises the level of investment decision difficulty. You know, we've got higher prices and a risk of even higher prices for vehicles in a period of weak carrier profitability. Uncertainty regarding the EPA 2027 clean truck regulation is not helpful. You know, what it sounds like to us is, I think that there was hope that this would be partial.
And, you know, the warranty piece of the regulation would be stripped and, you know, only the technology piece would be kept. You know, our increasingly clear understanding is this is likely to be an all, you know, unless things move very quickly, and that's not the way these things tend to work. Again, carrier profits are generational or at generational lows. There's no traction on them at present. I think, you know, by extension, there's no queuing pressure for truckers to place orders to get in line because backlogs are increasingly short. And then finally, as mentioned, you know, industry layoffs are beginning. So, you know, that sets up a challenging scenario as we move into the medium term.
With that, let me stop sharing and pass the baton.
Thank you, Ken, very much for that. We are now going to move over to Carlos Rice with the South American truck market perspective.
Okay. Hello? Everybody listening?
Yes, mostly everyone on the call. We do have 60 plus participants right now, but they are all muted for this session. We can hear you and see your screen.
Okay, good. This is what, okay. Okay. Okay, good morning, everybody. I would like to thank you, Rosita, for the kind invitation to stay with you today. We're talking about the truck market here in the South America region. I chose three countries only today because of the time, explaining in detail the issue of the countries. These three countries are the most important, except the period that we are not including today.
I am speaking about Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Let's go starting with Brazil. Okay. In this slide, we show the positive and negative points that affect the market. Not differently than what's happening all over the world with the recent measures adopted by the President of the United States with different taxes, Brazil has also been affected by them. Let's start with the black news. Brazil is going through a phase of high internal inflation affected by both rising international and local costs and government expenses. The Central Bank of Brazil is completely indebted, urgent, from the federal government and responsible for adopting the measures to control inflation. As annual inflation in Brazil is tendency to remain above the target set by the Central Bank between 3.5% and 4%, and this occurring around 5.3%, the Central Bank has keep it the SELIC rates.
This SELIC is the basic index adopted by the banks for adopting the interest rates here in Brazil. Those are extremely, sorry, high at this moment, in comparison with the previous year. This rate was until last week about 14.75% per year. Everybody, all the countries, is expecting that Central Bank in the meeting also placed it last week would maintain the rate at least, but they raised the rate even further to something around BRL 15%. Therefore, we see that the heavy vehicle market will continue to delay the purchase of new vehicles at least until the beginning of next year. Today, the main reason for maintaining the sales level this year and perhaps we have a slight drop in sales.
However, there is a waterfall between the sales in the segments of the truck in Brazil between the semi-heavy and heavy vehicles and those included in semi-light and light segments. Therefore, semi-light and light vehicles are in rise, as well as the semi-heavy and the heavy, very heavy vehicles are broken. One of the main reasons besides extremely high interest rates is the increase in prices of agricultural inputs, few of which are produced in Brazil, but they largely are imported. The increasing costs reduce the farmers' margins who are also suffering from the drop of the commodity price of their exported products, such as soybean and corn, products that are responsible for a large part of the Brazilian exports.
Now, talking positive points, we'll say that despite all bad news mentioned above, the Brazilian GDP points to a small growth, but with the upward tendencies, unemployment both in cities and in countryside is today the lowest ever recorded since the figures from official surveys have been carried, something about 25 years. Finally, agricultural harvest will repeat another substantial growth this year, which has been a trend for the last five years. The actual month average sales for 2025 over 2023 showing this graph presents an increase of over 4%. However, it also shows a slight drop of 1.1% compared with the same period in 2024 by the reason explained in these slides before, observed mainly on heavy vehicle segments. Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz hold the largest share of the market with more than 50%. This factor has been observed over the recent years.
However, some other outer markers have improved their performance, such as DAF and Iveco. In this slide shows the evolution sales by segment during the last 18 months, with a highlight on the recent falls in sales of heavy vehicles, mainly due to the high interest I already explained, and an increase in the medium and semi-heavy vehicles. These segments of medium and semi-heavy are where the oldest trucks in the Brazilian fleet are found and are mainly used in logistic, mainly in logistic in the cities in Brazil. In this slide here, we see the evolution of alternative sources such as electric and gas powered vehicles. Due to the large extension of the Brazilian territory and the low expansion of the energy supply points, as well as the resurging time, electric trucks have had little penetration with sales concentrated mainly in light vehicles transport into the cities.
Let's go talk about our forecast. One of the most index we consider in formulating our forecast is the Brazilian GDP, as shown a reasonable growth in the last four years with annual average of around 3.6%. In this year of 2025, we observe a current index of 2.2% below the average. However, with a slight tendency to increase compared to the beginning of the year where we had expectations of 1.9% for this year. The Brazilian unemployment rate has shown a substantial reduction, fading from the 14% in 2021 to around 6.6% currently, with an average annual average drop of around 2% per year. The beginning of this year showed an increase, but it returned to the levels of the end of last year.
The estimated grain production for this year of 2025 has grown again compared to 2023, and I mentioned 2023 because we happened to a gap in 2024. We estimate to reach something like 336 million tons of grain. Now, remember, about 2024, we had a very hard problem in one of the states of Brazil, called Rio Grande do Sul. This state is a particularly agricultural state and is responsible for about 12% of the Brazilian total production of grains. Here we see the 12-year sample of the behavior of the SELIC, as I already mentioned, that the Central Bank interest rate has already explained it before. A rate published by the Central Bank is based on calculated interest rates in Brazil.
In this year of 2025, the rate of 15% per year is the highest ever observed in the sample, which shows the concern of the Central Bank of Brazil in controlling domestic inflation, which is failing but extremely resistant to that index. The combination of high interest, the reduction in international price of soybean, the main grain exported by Brazil since last year, are showing this graph, and increasing agricultural inputs price reflecting failing the behavior of the segment of heavy truck sales in 2025. Another grain of vital importance for Brazilian exports, the corn, is facing the same drop in prices on the international market, which also contributes to dropping the sales of that heavy vehicles. Unlike in this countryside, where current economic means do not contribute to the growth of heavy vehicles, the service and industry's comportment are looking favorable this year.
Here we see two indexes used in the formulation of our forecast, which are the industry and consumer confidence indexes, favorable at this moment, and mainly benefiting two truck segments, the medium and semi-heavy segments, widely used in the cities and the industries. Our estimate for this year of 2025 is that the total of 122,000 trucks will be sold in Brazil, with sales slightly below those observed in 2024, mainly due to the large share of the heavy vehicles in total sales, not fully compensated by the other segments in this slide you can see. We call your attention to the possibilities that sales of a little more than 131,000 trucks could be achieved, mainly considering an eventual increase in grain exports caused by the war traded between the United States and China, which is the main grain's Brazilian buyer.
On the other hand, the even greater tightening in interest rates on investment that we are observing to do, increased for the fourth time since last year, and very recently, how I explained it, increased again, could cause an even greater drop in the heavy vehicle sector and also could reduce the actual increase level in other segments. This fact could drop the sales level for this year for something around 112,000 vehicles. This is our most recent projections for our forecast for the trucks in Brazil for the next five years. We remind again that based on our estimates in the indexes previously presented, but also mainly based on our experience in South American markets, the figures presented here are our best feeling on that reflects our behavior for the market.
Now let's talk a little bit about the buses in Brazil. Here we see a substantial increase in several segments of this category, but mainly in the government program, school buses in 2024. Here we show very good growth compared to the previous years. Let's also remember that we had the COVID problem in the years before 2022, which was a recovery year, but even so, 2024 was an excellent year. As we see, as we saw in the previous, referred to the indexes such as the fall in unemployment and the improvement in consumer confidence index, although GDP growth has not followed the same behavior as the previous years, the accumulated sales in 2025 are better than those in 2024 by 34.9%. The graph on the right, we see that Mercedes-Benz continues to be the leader in the market like in previous years.
Sales of electric buses are still very, very small in Brazil. However, you see them a very viable alternative for large Brazilian cities. We have observed large movement in city-by-city halls, public transport companies, and vehicle manufacturers that permit us to prevent that in coming years we will see a substantial increase in electric buses within transportation in Brazilian cities. Our forecast presented here shows a behavior of the sector for the next five years. We see that the risk factors are small and the growing demand for buses in all sectors has been constant in the recent years. Let's talk about Argentina. Argentina is the second South American country in volume of truck sales behind only Brazil. It is in a strong economy recovered this year with GDP growth estimated by the Central Bank Argentina at more than 5%.
Inflation, which in 2023 reached its worst historic level with over 200% per year, has estimated published by the Central Bank of 30% for this year of 2025. The drop in the inflation was caused mainly by cuts in government spending and a substantial improvement in fiscal funds turning into an Argentina economic recovery. Also, Argentina has been a substantial improvement in its trade balance with the devaluation of their currency. You can note that previously had a huge gap between the official dollar and the dollar used in the main domestic transaction. With the currency overvaluated, the loss of competitiveness of companies was huge, which greatly affected domestic and external operations. As a result of these actions, the fiscal balance that was negative in 2023 at around 3% reacts, according to official projections, to more than 1% positive in 2025. These measures adopted have that bad side.
The social cost could be higher in the coming years due to the austerity of the measures taken. In addition to the cuts in spending without unpopular and leading to political implications in the coming years, Argentina's reserves will still remain extremely low, which leaves the country very vulnerable to external trade shocks and movement and today's global situation of internal international conflict. Sorry. One thing is certain. After two years of recession, with the tightening of the actual President Milei government's action, the Argentine economy has returned to a strong growth. If they manage to maintain the current economic pillars, the trend is for a growth to remain strong in 2026.
One fact to write is that Volkswagen started to assemble CKDs of some of its vehicles in Argentina, joining Iveco, which has been producing in the country for a long time, or the automakers export Finnish vehicles to the country. Due to the reasons that I mentioned, sales in Argentina had jumped for an incredible 109% in the first five months of this year of 2025 when compared to the same period of 2024. Due to the volatility of the Argentina economy, local companies took advantage of this stable monetary moment to renew their fleets. All brands basically benefit also from the moment, with special highlights for Scania, Foton, Volvo, Volkswagen, and Isuzu in that order, with sales above 100% over the previous year of 2024.
We expect this year of 2025 will continue to show a reasonable improvement in heavy vehicle sales in Argentina, lower than the results of the first five months, but still positive, which, in accordance to our internal projections and index, result in an estimate of a 56% increase in sales in 2025 over 2024. Let's talk about Chile. In this slide, we summarize the three main positive and negative points that guide and construct our forecast for trucks in Chile. We highlight that the Chilean economy is wide open to the international market and objected toward it. Therefore, Chile is immensely affected by the behavior of international markets. The mining sectors in Chile main economic drive being the largest copper producer in the world. In 2024, Chile produced around 5.3 million metric cubic of the metal, representing a significant portion of the global production.
Truck sectors are directly affected by the behavior of the copper production and export. Guided by international trade, especially mining, this year of 2025 shows a good recovery of the sectors in the international market. The level of production in April of this year showed a growth of around 10% over the same month in 2024. Thus, the official government office, IMAEC, which is responsible for controlling GDP in Chile, estimates that the growth for the year will be around 2.5%. In 2023, Chile experienced a strong inflation, high interest rates, and low growth in 2024. The Central Bank reduced interest rates, and inflation falls, reaching the target of 3% per year. However, now the country is turning greatly affected by international trade, and global growth has a direct impact on the Chilean economy.
The continuity of the wars, Russia and Ukraine, and now Israel and Iran, is causing a huge effect on the world's economy. The price of oil is already being affected again by the war between Israel and Iran. Another consequence of these global conflicts can harm the Chilean economy, generating negative effects on companies' expenditures and investments. Sales in Chile in 2025 show a slight recovery when compared to 2024, the year in which they reached the lowest sales and declined substantially when compared with the previous years. The problems faced by Chile in the past. We also see a slight positive evolution, sorry, for the second half of the year compared to the last year.
In 2025, we expect something about 8% better than the year of 2024, which showed that the Chilean market is in recovery, on its way to reach the quantity sold in 2021 on the post-pandemic year in the most two and recover it in the next two or three years. This slide shows how we project the Chilean sales market for 2025. As we said in the previous slide, we project an increase in sales in 2025 for around 8.2% higher, but 21% below the sales recorded in 2021. The recent international conflicts between Israel and Iran and the involvement of other countries, such as in the United States and European countries affected by the impact of oil prices, may affect our forecast. However, we do not see yet a large effect in 2025, but the effects could affect the year of 2026.
Although small, small representing around 10% of the sales of Brazil, the Chilean market is extremely open to imports. It is the fourth market in South America in terms of truck sales, below Argentina, with an our estimate of 20,000 units per year. And Peru, that we are not talking about today, for around 17,000 units estimated for this year. Peru is in very good increase this year. There are the mining sector in Peru is in very good shape, and, we estimate that Peru will have a very good year. At the time, we are not aborting Peru today, but it's okay for the next time. We choose only these three countries, like I explained it a little bit. However, it carries your attention to our expense in other countries in South America and Central America also.
If you have any questions, I invite you to send us emails with your questions, or you will return with further details. Thank you again for listening to us today. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Rice. Now we will hand it over to Paris Kiernan to cover the commercial vehicle powertrain outlook.
Thank you. Hi everyone. I know it's slightly run over, so I'll keep it nice and short and simple for the end of the session today. Thank you for everyone that's attended, and thank you for my other panelist members who have spoken through the market dynamics of the commercial vehicle market. I will now be diverging slightly from market dynamics to powertrain technologies in the commercial vehicle sector.
What we have seen over the last 12 months or so, as panelists have mentioned, is a lot of uncertainty, both politically and on an economic basis. When you look at the powertrain landscape, with the uncertainty around emissions legislation and possible delay to GHG3 phase three in North America and CO2 targets in Europe, it is creating a lot of distortion to the market. A lot of operators are delaying those purchases. In terms of when we look at zero-emission vehicles, we are seeing a slower ramp-up than initially was anticipated a couple of years ago across the Western world, except in China, where we are seeing really strong growth, especially for heavy-duty battery electric trucks. Hydrogen, on a global consensus basis, we have seen a lot of pullback on investment projects being canceled. We are seeing hydrogen go through a little bit of a trough of disillusionment.
We're hoping it comes out the other side, but we have seen pullback on hydrogen projects, which is going to have a cause of concern for hydrogen availability, let alone hydrogen price overall. In China, we've really seen, as John mentioned, exports really propping up demand for production volumes in China going out to exports. That's mainly diesel-based trucks. We've also seen domestically a boom in natural gas, helped by that favorable natural gas price over diesel. Hydrogen policy is a big driver, not just in total market volumes, but also when you look at the powertrain landscape. When we talk about powertrain, we're thinking about the conventional diesel, natural gas, and then some gasoline, mainly in the U.S., and then looking at those future powertrain technologies for decarbonization.
You have electric in terms of battery electric vehicles, and then hydrogen with your fuel cell and hydrogen ICE applications. When we're looking at emissions legislation on the NOxU side, that's coming into play in Europe. We've got Euro seven coming in May 2029. North America, as Kenny said, model year 2027. There are questions and concerns over whether this is going to be implemented as is, or if there's going to be changes. We have to wait and see on that. Euro 7 is, yeah, into effect 2029, and then we're expecting China to propose equivalent standards over the course of this year. We're looking at the moment time frame in 2030, but around that time frame, maybe six months earlier, maybe six months later.
Following that, we'd expect India to also update its NOxU emission standards to about at stage seven, looking after China's implementation time. Maybe around the 2032 target, but we're still awaiting the proposal there. When we go to CO2 targets, we have Europe's 2025 target coming in this year. There's a reduction of 15% compared to the 2019-2020 base level. It's expected that the majority of that CO2 reduction is going to be met by advances in the current trucks, so advances in the ICE technology, variable valve timing, and things like on the engine side of things, but then also in terms of area and dynamic improvements. I know some of the truck OEMs now have mirrored cameras as a standard. Things like this are helping reduce the CO2 target.
That should be pretty much met, for the 50% target. When you then look out to 2030 and you're seeing that 45% reduction in CO2, this will require a significant uptake of zero-emission vehicle volumes. Industry and OEMs, I think, are currently looking to water this down, push it back, or possibly postpone this target due to the stringency and the lack of infrastructure that's available for zero-emission vehicles. It's unlikely that this target could be met by the amount that zero-emission vehicles will need to be adopted. You're looking possibly about a 30% share of zero-emission vehicles in that 2030 target, and I think it's around 1% at the moment in the market.
Yeah, OEMs are looking to push that back, especially due to the very high penalties that they will receive if they do not meet this target. As we know more, we will update customs and clients as we go on. As we already mentioned, GHG3 also unsure at the moment, very likely to be postponed and watered down. These CO2 targets have a direct impact on the uptake of zero-emission vehicle rates. Reverting back to those NOxU emissions, we had California bringing its omnibus legislation in 2024. We are starting to see some post-Euro 6 emissions aftertreatment system. What we have seen so far when we are looking up to meet that 2027 target in North America is Cummins, Paccar, and Volvo have committed to a similar strategy.
We're looking at a 48-volt alternator, which powers the electric heated catalyst, because for the very low NOx at cold start and idling, increase in temperature of the exhaust aftertreatment system is required. That's one route that some of the OEMs have gone down. When I was at ACT Expo in North America earlier this year, I was talking to International, and they have a completely different strategy where actually they are removing the EGR and DAC, and they're positioning the SCR closer to the engine, so that extra additional engine heat would then provide that kind of warm-up in cold starting. As we go on the European side, we have to wait and see what the European OEMs are going to equip their Euro seven engines with.
It is likely that in terms of trying to reduce costs, these will be modular across many regions, same for a lot of Cummins joint ventures are in China as well. We expect that the same aftertreatment system will be used. KGP will have four scenarios for which we look to forecast zero-emission vehicle volume. So battery electric, hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen Ice. We use these four scenarios, with key metrics like economy, legislation, incentives, total cost of ownership, infrastructure, and critical materials playing a part. What we've seen recently is if you take the IPCC 2.0 scenario, pre-Trump, you would have had the U.S. under this scenario, and also probably six months ago, China would also have been in the fuel economy environment.
We've seen China's shift over to the IPCC 2.0, and we've seen the U.S. shift down to the fuel economy environment. I think depending on where the legislation goes with the EU's year two target, I think the European Union is also at risk to shifting down to the fuel economy and environment scenario. When we look into the kind of the metrics that are underpinning these scenarios, we look at legislation. There's widespread commitment in terms of meeting CO2 targets. A lot of what's driving some demand indefinitely in Europe is those ESG and CSR targets. I think some downside risks, as mentioned, we're expecting delays to the CO2 standards both in the U.S. and Europe. There's a lack of consistency in terms of policy.
Your policy makers tend to easily delay or change policy, which creates uncertainty to operators. We are starting to see, also to mention, some low and zero-emission zones, especially in the Netherlands. You see a higher share of zero-emission vehicles in the Netherlands due to this fact. Legislation is a key driver to those zero-emission vehicle volumes. OEMs have been very positive and very optimistic, possibly, let's say, 12 months ago on their zero-emission vehicle sales. A lot of them have phasing out their fully on the passenger car side for ICE. We have very strong, or very high shares for zero-emission vehicles for the truck side. Some OEMs expecting to be selling 50%, you know, after 2030, for instance. There has been consolidation between OEMs and tier one. You have seen a lot of collaboration.
You've seen Cummins acquire Meritor, setting up its own zero-emission vehicle unit in Accelera. You've seen Daimler and Volvo partner on a fuel cell partnership, Cellcentric. You've seen a lot of cooperation, a lot of partnerships to reduce those costs and really drive forward in OEMs' portfolios for zero-emission vehicles. We're starting to see some longer haul applications into the market. Heavy-duty trucks around 600 km are now available to order. You've had MAN introduce its first electric coach in Europe. I would say that, you know, in terms of these models, they're just starting to come into the market. I think more needs to happen in terms of customer acceptance and customer reliability as those zero-emission vehicles are deployed more on the market. We're starting to see them driving at much longer ranges and over certain years.
We can see over several years how battery performance is going. I think early adoption was faded somewhat due to a lot of the new entrants in the market having had some financial difficulties. I mentioned Teva, Volta, Quantron, Hyzon, HVS, Nikola, Lion Electric, Terra being a big one, and especially on the battery side of things as well. We have seen it seem more difficult than what was expected. I think that's been primarily due to a lot of the industry expecting volumes to be higher than what they have been. We have seen the likes of infrastructure and TCO be key barriers to wider adoption of the zero-emission vehicles.
On the infrastructure side of things, you know, there's a lot that needs to be done in terms of connecting the grid, not only permits and regulation, which takes a long time to deal with. You have a lot of DNO and utility providers. I think in the U.K., you have around 60 DNOs. In Germany, you've got over 600. There's a wide range of utility providers across different countries, which, when you're trying to connect your depot to the grid, you've got connection times of at least a year. If it's going well, it could go out to two years. If you need to improve the transformer, you need to improve the capacity to the depot, then you're looking at a very long time. You know, it could be three years, could be six years.
So, this delay in the speed of rollout of infrastructure is playing its part in delaying zero-emission vehicle adoption. And what I would say in terms of the long-range heavy-duty trucks is really, it is dependent on megawatt charging systems. They are in development. Some are already being deployed at this moment in time, but the speed and the rollout of these megawatt charging systems will be critical for long-haul duty battery electric trucks. What we have seen in China is significant declines in battery price, which has really driven demand in the heavy-duty side. When we are talking about the trade conflict, then if in the U.S., if a lot of the battery supply chain is China, this is going to increase the cost of those battery electric trucks out in the U.S. This also plays a role.
I think one key area, especially for the small and medium-sized enterprises, is that residual value, that lack of a second-hand market, is really a key barrier. At the moment, a lot of the applications for battery electric and the zero-emission vehicle technology is required. Some of these are required, and it is not a long-term feasible option if you think about governments and the tax revenues that they gain. Critical materials, majority of these, rare earth and rare metals, are concentrated in China. We have that increase of that geopolitical risk and possible supply shortages. The brief overview of those volumes, what we are seeing is the global XEV volumes, just under 170,000 units in 2024. This is concentrated in China.
We saw doubling of growth in the heavy-duty truck segment for the battery electrics, reaching around 80,000 in 2024. It was expected to reach over 100,000, but now forecasts are even higher, probably looking out to 170,000 this year. The market is definitely moving faster than anyone particularly thought, say, six months ago. This has been supported by those declines in battery prices, which have enabled the truck price for battery electric truck price in China to be reduced by around 30%. When you take into consideration the 60% savings in fuel costs, favorable TCO is already occurring in those short-range applications in China, which actually generates quite a high share of all routes performed by semi-tractors in China.
We have also had the trade-in policy, which subsidizes the scrappage of state three and state four trucks, as John said. It also, when you trade in your state three or state four truck, you can get an extra subsidy for replacing it with a new energy vehicle. This has also helped further reduce the cost of the battery electric truck. I think in terms of when we are looking at Europe and North America, particularly the most recent volume has been concentrated in those big operators like Amazon, DHL, those that have, you know, the money to invest in a small amount of battery electric trucks. A lot have been for CSR or ESG or for trialing purposes and a lot of project-based work. I think we have not quite yet seen it being market demand-driven.
I think infrastructure has been a big bottleneck for those regions. I think to get out to 2030 and the EU markets have reached a 30% share, the speed of infrastructure needs to have a momentum shift in that sense. I think one thing that China has been helped by in the early stages of adoption of battery electric trucks has been the battery swapping technology. Whereas in China, we have CATL who provides around 60% of the market for batteries. When you have a little bit more of a standardization of battery, those batteries can be swapped out. Whereas in Europe and North America, with differing battery pack suppliers, each battery swap facility would have to have all these different battery packs.
There is no standardization in terms of batteries and also in terms of, at the moment, chargers. There is no standardization of chargers. Yeah, rely on megawatt charging systems for wider adoption of those longer haul range vehicles. I think what will be really interesting to see, from this point now out to 2030, is how well battery electric vehicles perform, how quick the infrastructure can be adopted. I think this will really decipher the level of demand required for alternative fuels. When I speak about alternative fuels, I am thinking about hydrogen-powered vehicles, so your fuel cell electric vehicle and your hydrogen ICE. Then also you have your HVO, hydrogen to the vegetable oil. You have your natural gas, which can be your renewable natural gas. Also, e-fuels are still under discussion. We have also been, recently in China, seeing an uptick for hybridization of trucks.
Hybridization came in around 2007 in Europe. Since then, it has kind of been very subdued in market volumes, but it does allow those carbon emissions reductions in the short term. Depending on where the CO2 targets go, we could see an improved demand for hybridization. That was a quick presentation on the powertrain technology trends. If you'd like to take down my email, I'm happy to answer any questions on the powertrain technologies for the commercial vehicles. As I know, we have run out of time for any Q&A. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Paris. Thank you to all of our panelists for today. Some people did go ahead and send Q&As through throughout the session, and those were answered.
Of course, if anyone has further questions, I'm going to share the PowerPoint so you guys can jot down this email. Just one second, please. Okay. One more minute of your time. Okay. You should be able to see this. This is if you have any queries, customersuccess.automotive@globaldata.com. At this time, we will be closing out the webinar. Again, thank you to all of our panelists and attendees. This is the email if you did not have time to answer or if something comes to mind after our call today. We did get a couple of questions asking about some of the PowerPoint, recording, and slides being shared. We will be sure to share those with you after the call today. Thank you all again for joining us and enjoy the rest of your day.