I'm not sure we should be so quick to fault them. The unemployment rate when the pandemic really started building up steam was absolutely staggering so a lot of people quite reasonably expected a severe recession along with severe contraction of consumer demand to follow. That we didn't experience one is a minor miracle (and printing of a ridiculous amount of money).
The high unemployment rate during the pandemic was(and still is) mostly formed of people working in the service industry, travel, minimum wage earners and people with little to no skills and those people were having a rough time even before the pandemic so they were never on the automakers' radar of customers would buy a new car, not in a million years. Those people can only afford to buy used.
On the other hand, the typical new car buyer, the middle classer and above, saw little unemployment, on the contrary, many have seen their best years yet, which is why the demand for new cars (among other things) exploded.
You absolutely should be quick to fault them... They cut off nearly all orders from suppliers anticipating an economic downturn and had no risk mitigation strategy if they were to resume production. In essence they left the line at a concert after hearing rumors the band wasn't going to show.
Now they know the concert is definitely on, they want their place in the line back and the manufacturers told them to pound sand, since there are tons more people paying more money than they are.
Automotive manufacturers think they have much more weight than they actually do when it comes to purchasing electronic components. They definitely came to a rude awakening when the chip fabs and manufacturers told them to go to the back of the line.
For reference, the entire automotive market in 2020 spent 38 billion on semiconductors. Apple alone spent 53 billion in 2020.
If you are going to prioritize something, who do you think is going to get special treatment?
