Monday Morning Signal Brief — June 9, 2026
EV wholesale up 11.9% YoY. May payments at $748 with $3,297 in incentives doing the carrying. Recall radar. Dealer hours and Google scoreboard coming. DARPI launches.
Week of June 9, 2026. Here is what you need to know before the desk, plus full retail market and for sale by owner market data dashboard.
This Week's Signals
EV wholesale prices up 11.9% year over year in May. The rest of the market barely moved.
The EV wholesale index has been climbing all year. +6.7% YoY in mid-March. +7.9% YoY in the March full-month read. +6.2% YoY mid-April. Now +11.9% YoY in May, with +3.5% month over month. The overall index moved +3.6% YoY but only +0.3% MoM. Non-EV was flat month over month. Wholesale days supply: 26 days. Sales conversion: 59.9%.
The question dealers should be asking: is retail keeping up? DARPI baseline data shows near-new EVs at $44K median asking price with 65-day DOM. Wholesale is running hot. Retail absorption is slower. That spread is where front gross goes. Watch trade-in equity positions on EV-heavy stores.
Source: Auto Remarketing / CBT News, May 2026
May affordability: incentives are doing the work. Payments are not getting better.
J.D. Power and GlobalData forecast May retail volume at 1,231,900 units on a $45,462 average transaction price. Average monthly payment: $748. Average APR: 6.93%. The number carrying demand: incentives at $3,297 per vehicle — up from recent months, bridging the affordability gap that the rate environment refuses to close.
For the desk: payment-first shoppers dominate the floor right now. Trade capture rate discipline and F&I value are where you protect gross when incentives are doing the heavy lifting on the transaction side. Lease penetration holds where it pencils.
Source: THE SHOP / J.D. Power + GlobalData, May 2026
We Called It
On April 9 we published The 2026 EV Lease Wave Is Real. The 2027 Wave Is Twice as Big. Dealers Have One Quarter to Get Ready. The thesis was supply pressure. 230% more off-lease EVs returning in 2026. The conventional expectation was that supply would crush prices.
The market answered differently. Demand absorbed the wave. EV wholesale prices have gone up every month since. The dealers who sourced aggressively into EV off-lease inventory in Q1 are sitting on margin that wasn't supposed to be there.
Recall Radar
11 safety-critical recalls logged this week. The four largest by vehicles affected:
- Ram / Jeep, Trailer Tow Package (26V059): 456,287 vehicles across multiple model lines. Trailer detachment risk. Service lane opportunity on every tow-package unit in the system.
- Hyundai Santa Cruz, Tucson, Tucson Hybrid, Tucson PHEV, MY 2025-2026 (26V316): 421,078 vehicles.
- Ford Expedition / Lincoln Navigator (26V344): 419,967 vehicles. Seat belt pretensioner issue. Safety critical.
- Chrysler Pacifica / Voyager, 2022-2026 (26V189): 253,481 vehicles.
Full recall log feeds next week's brief as well. All 11 entries are safety critical.
Coming This Week
When your store is closed, someone else's is open.
A look at dealership operating hours data across the US and what the gap between top performers and the rest means for ROs, trades, and lost gross. 17,962 dealers. 96.5% open Saturdays. 22.3% open Sundays. The Saturday correlation with Google review volume is statistically significant and the number will change how you think about scheduling.
17,962 dealers. Every Google review. One scoreboard.
We collected every US franchise dealership listed on Google. Reviews, ratings, volume, brand. We are building a live scoreboard. Top dealers by rating. Top dealers by review volume. Broken down by brand. Coming this week.
Introducing DARPI: The Retail Price Index Wholesale Reports Can't Show You
Wholesale indices tell you what dealers paid last week. DARPI tracks what dealers are asking today — and what private sellers are asking consumers directly. 40 million+ active dealer listings. 34 brands tracked in the FSBO Market tab. 10 vehicle segments. Updated every Monday.
Week 1 baseline: near-new (1-5yr) median asking price $32,761 across 1.54 million active listings. Fullsize SUVs lead at ~$56K. Tesla FSBO clears in 26 days — fastest moving brand in the private party market. Full Pickups sit at 106 days on dealer lots.
Live interactive dashboard at data.dgactual.com. Full methodology at blog.dgactual.com/darpi.
DGActual Signal Intelligence. dgactual.com. Built for dealers, not algorithms.
