car industry
EU car market will continue to drop in 2021 due to a lack of chips
Vehicles on the federal highway 96 in front of the Rügen bridge. The number of new car registrations in Europe fell for the sixth time in a row. Photo: Stefan Sauer/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The car market in Europe is shrinking for the sixth time in a row. Not only does less demand put a strain on the industry’s coffers, the ongoing shortage of components such as microchips is also depressing business.
Fewer new cars were registered in the European Union last year than in the Corona crisis year 2020.
The number of new registrations fell by 2.4 percent to 9.7 million cars, as announced by the European industry association Acea in Brussels on Tuesday. As early as 2020, the pandemic caused a record slump in the car market.
Especially in the second half of 2021, the global shortage of microchips weighed heavily on car manufacturers, when production at numerous manufacturers stalled at times. Over the year as a whole, among the German manufacturers, only BMW recorded a small increase of 1.5 percent in new registrations. Market leader Volkswagen had to accept moderate losses, Daimler slipped 12.4 percent into the red.
Ten percent minus in Germany
Among the four largest markets within the EU, the numbers fell only in Germany, where there was a drop of around 10 percent in new registrations. At least they increased slightly in Spain and France, and by as much as 5.5 percent in Italy. A total of 3.3 million fewer vehicles were registered in the EU than in the pre-corona year 2019.
The magnitude of the chip shortage becomes particularly clear when looking at the December data: In the entire EU, just under 800,000 cars were newly registered, a drop of 22.8 percent compared to the same month last year. It was the sixth decline in a row. The largest markets all recorded double-digit percentage losses, in Germany new registrations fell by more than a quarter. Among the manufacturers, the VW group in particular had to struggle, whose main brand collapsed by around 40 percent in December.