Strong minus: New cars remain scarce and expensive
Status: 07/15/2022 12:58 p.m
At the beginning of the summer things are not going as planned for the European car market. The number of new registrations continued to fall significantly. The numbers in Germany and Great Britain are particularly bad.
Fewer and fewer new cars are being registered across Europe. In June the number of new passenger car registrations in the EU including the countries of the European Free Trade Association EFTA (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland) and Great Britain fell by 16.8 percent to 1.28 million vehicles. This was announced today by the European manufacturers’ association ACEA.
Of the five major markets in particular, the UK and Germany fared poorly. Here the declines compared to the corresponding month of the previous year were 24 and 18 percent. Italy (minus 15 percent), France (minus 14 percent) and Spain (minus eight percent) also developed weaker than in the previous year. In the EU alone, things are also going down sharply. According to management consultancy EY, the new car market here reached its lowest level in June since the eastward enlargement of the EU in 2014.
High prices, long delivery times
“Semiconductors and raw materials are still scarce, which leads to considerable difficulties in production. The hoped-for recovery is likely to be further delayed due to the strict lockdown policy in China,” explained EY expert Peter Fuss. The expert expects that the availability of new cars will be limited, new car prices will remain high and delivery times will remain long. Manufacturers would also continue to focus on producing vehicles that could make them the most money, i.e. foot.
The negative signs also dominate when looking at the entire first half of the year. The number of newly registered cars in all reportedly fell by 14 percent to around five million units. Hardest hit were manufacturers Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo, with declines of 35 and 29 percent, respectively. The Volkswagen Group lost 19 percent, the BMW Group sold 14 percent fewer vehicles and Mercedes-Benz including Smart eleven percent. The South Korean Hyundai Group, on the other hand, strengthened by far. Together with the Kia brand, this posted an increase of 13 percent.