The car market in Europe continued to make up ground in June. With an increase of a good 4 percent, new car sales reached their highest level in almost five years, according to data from the manufacturers’ association ACEA. In the first half of the year, 5.7 million new cars came onto the roads in the 27 EU countries, as the association announced on Thursday. That was 4.5 percent more than in the same period last year, but still 18 percent less than before the corona crisis that broke out in 2020. Constantin Gall, automotive expert at the management consultancy EY, explained that things are only slowly improving because of the weak economy, inflation, political instability in the EU and geopolitical tensions such as the Ukraine war.
According to EY calculations, in the four and a half years since the outbreak of the pandemic, 20 million fewer new cars have been sold in the EU than in the pre-crisis period. The car companies are struggling with constant underutilization. “There will be no way around capacity adjustments – especially since new competitors are entering the market with the Chinese electric car manufacturers.” The industry leader was created by the German car manufacturers Volkswagen The strongest growth was in the first half of the year at 4 percent. BMW grew by 1.5 percent (market share 6.3 percent), while Mercedes-Benz sales fell by 2.4 percent and its market share fell to 5 percent.
The number of new registrations of purely electric cars fell by one percent last month. The rapid rise of electric vehicles in Belgium and Italy with increases of 50.4 and 117.4 percent, respectively, double-digit declines were achieved Germany, the Netherlands and France don’t balance. In this country, e-car sales collapsed when government funding ended at the end of last year. “Germany is the sick man of Europe when it comes to electric cars,” said Lucien Mathieu, car expert at the environmental organization Transport & Environment.
Hybrid cars with the strongest growth
Hybrid cars with integrated, non-externally chargeable electric motors are a hit across Europe. You save some fuel by temporarily driving electrically. From January to June, a fifth more such cars found buyers, at 1.7 million. When it comes to drive types, they are just behind pure petrol engines, which dominate the market with two million units. One of the successful manufacturers is Renault. The French market leader sold hybrid models such as Clio and Captur in the first half of the year, 60 percent more than in the same period last year. At around 18 percent, their sales share across the group was higher than that of purely battery-electric cars, which accounted for 12 percent of all cars sold.
At the Swedish car manufacturer Volvo, which is owned by the Chinese electric car manufacturer Geely, almost every second car sold is electrified. Volvo imports electric cars from China and is therefore affected by the European Union’s punitive tariffs provisionally introduced in July. The Swedes are expecting a setback to the rapidly increasing sales. The forecast is now 12 to 15 percent instead of 15 percent growth for 2024, which would be 793,000 to 815,000 cars. The company wants to pull back because headwinds are emerging, explained CEO Jim Rowan (59). “This is really driven by tariffs.” In the second quarter, operating profit jumped by 60 percent to the equivalent of around 690 million euros.