Kelley Blue Book’s average new-vehicle price hit a record $50,080 in September as EVs and luxury models rose. Houston’s average is $50,975. A variety of electric vehicles from Volkswagon, Kia, Volvo, Ford and Chevrolet were on display at the Houston Auto Show in this file photo. 
The average retail price of new cars and trucks reached an all-time high last month, crossing the $50,000 threshold for the first time.
Across the nation, the average transaction price of a new vehicle sold in September was $50,080, according to estimates released last week by Kelley Blue Book, the auto industry guide. That's up 2.1% from August and 3.6% compared to September 2024, and comes as drivers are facing rising auto insurance premiums and high repair costs as well as sticker shock at the car lots. 
"We've been expecting to break through the $50,000 barrier. It was only a matter of time, especially when you consider the best-selling vehicle in America is a pickup truck from Ford that routinely costs north of $65,000," said Erin Keating, an executive analyst at Cox Automotive, in a statement accompanying the new record.
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The $20,000-vehicle, she added, "is now mostly extinct." 
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In the Houston region, average new vehicle prices actually crossed $50,000 several years ago, partly as a result of the inflation and supply-chain bottlenecks associated with the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. 
The average prices of new and used vehicles have cooled since 2022. Still, the average retail price for all new vehicles sold in the region was $50,975 in August, according to a monthly update from the Greater Houston Partnership based on data from TexAuto Facts, published by InfoNation. 
That's in part because Houston drivers tend to favor bigger vehicles, the GHP report suggests. Roughly 80% of the new vehicles sold in the region in August were trucks or SUVs, which carry an average price of $53,000, compared to an average retail price for a new car of $40,242.
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At the national level, average new vehicle prices have been pushed up by purchases of electric vehicles and luxury vehicles, both of which tend to cost more than $50,000.
Kelley Blue Book said that its initial estimates found that EVs had 11.6% market share in the U.S. market in September, which would also be a record high. The average price for an electric vehicle last month was $58,124.
"Today's auto market is being driven by wealthier households who have access to capital, good loan rates and are propping up the higher end of the market," said Keating, the analyst. "Tariffs have introduced new cost pressure to the business, but the pricing story in September was mostly driven by the healthy mix of EVs and higher-end vehicles pushing the new-vehicle [average transaction price] into uncharted territory."
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Houstonians who are not in the market for a new vehicle may still have seen their auto insurance premiums rise, in part because more costly vehicles are associated with more costly claims. 
Budget-conscious drivers can find some relief, at least, at the pump. Houston saw an average gas price per gallon last week of $2.59, according to a report from fuel-price tracker GasBuddy.
Erica Grieder is a business reporter for the Houston Chronicle.
She joined the Houston Chronicle, as a metro columnist, in 2017. Prior to that she spent ten years based in Austin, reporting on politics and economics, as the southwest correspondent for The Economist, from 2007-2012, then as a senior editor at Texas Monthly, from 2012-2016. In 2013, she published her first book, “Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas.” An Air Force brat, Erica thinks of San Antonio as home. She is a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’s Emerging Leaders Council, and holds degrees from the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs and Columbia University, where she majored in philosophy.
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