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 were particularly bad.
Fewer and fewer new cars are being registered across Europe. In June, the number of new 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 top five markets, the UK and German markets performed particularly poorly. Here the declines compared to the corresponding month of the previous year were 24 and 18 percent respectively. 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, there was also a sharp downward trend. 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 significant impairments in production. The hoped-for recovery is likely to be further delayed, also 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 continue to focus on producing vehicles that could make them the most money, Fuss said.
The negative signs also dominate when looking at the entire first half of the year. The number of newly registered cars in all the areas mentioned fell by 14 percent to around five million units. Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo were hardest hit, 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. On the other hand, the South Korean Hyundai Group developed by far the strongest. Together with the Kia brand, this posted an increase of 13 percent.