COVID-19 continues to be the culprit impacting the supply and demand of the auto industry. 

"Numbers are going up. Countries and governments are in trouble again," Kent State University Economist Dr. Omid Bagheri said. 

Autotrade Executive Analyst Michelle Krebs points to recent news, "Toyota announced it was cutting 40-percent of its global production through September."

Because of the Delta variant affecting global manufactures, record-high sticker prices and fewer choices to choose from will likely not be going away any time soon.

"Right now, the big issue is a plant in Malaysia that makes chips and they have a tremendous amount of COVID outbreak there," Krebs said, "That one plant in Malaysia has shut down Nissan plants in  U.S. and ford plants here."

This comes as auto industries are still catching up from when they first paused production and microchip orders in the spring, all while electronic sales skyrocketed, which use the same chips.

So what should consumers know? If you lease, you may have the option to extend it or you could buy out if inventory is scarce.

Bagheri said there are concerns for consumer pricing of cars for years to come.

"This increase in the prices might not be easy to go back to the way it was because when companies are producing cars, they get used to selling cars at a certain price. Their cost structure might change a little bit," he said, "There might be a permanent change in the market for cars, not making it super easy to where the prices of cars can go back to the prices they used to be, and that would be pressure on people who want to buy cars in the future."

Krebs said global experts predict the auto industry production could be impacted until 2023.

She adds there is pressure for manufactures to make microchips in the United States.

"We're starting to hear announcements from companies that they're going to start building in the U.S., or they're ramping up production," Krebs said, "but that's not going to solve the problem overnight."