While the automotive markets in Europe, Japan and the USA shrank last year, sales in China and India increased significantly compared to 2021. In particular, the lack of preliminary products and raw materials, the sharp rise in energy and logistics prices and the uncertainty triggered by the Russian war of aggression prevented better results on the international automotive markets.
Overall, global passenger car sales remained at the prior-year level at 71.2 million units. For this year, the German Association of the Automotive Industry expects growth of four percent to a good 74 million vehicles. For example, the overall European market grew by 15 percent to 1.1 million new registrations in December. However, this was no longer able to compensate for the declines of the previous months.
Around 11.3 million passenger cars were newly registered in Europe last year. That is four percent less than in 2021 and more than a quarter less (29 percent) than the German market grew by one percent in the pre-Corona year 2019, demand for new vehicles in Great Britain (minus two 2 percent), Spain (-5 %) and in France (-8%). In Italy, the volume of new registrations fell by ten percent.
In China, car sales rose by ten percent to 23.2 million cars. The declines in spring, when lockdowns in key sales regions severely restricted business, were made up for in the second half of the year thanks to a tax reduction on a large proportion of the vehicles sold. At the end of December, 2.2 million new vehicles were sold in the country, six percent less than in the same month last year.
In the US, light vehicle sales (cars, vans and pick-ups) fell by eight percent last year to 13.7 million vehicles. That’s over three million units fewer than in 2019 and before the pandemic. In December, demand increased once more slightly by five percent to 1.3 million light vehicles.
In Japan, deliveries of 3.4 million cars (-6%) were below the previous year’s level for the fourth time in a row.
In Russia, light vehicle sales in 2022 fell by 59 percent to almost 687,400 units. Due to the war once morest Ukraine, numerous international automobile manufacturers withdrew from the country from March 2022. And the domestic market leader Lada, with almost 190,000 vehicles, sold over 160,000 fewer cars than before the attack on the neighboring country.
Almost 3.8 million cars were sold in the Indian car market in 2022. That is almost a quarter more than in the previous year (+23%) December 235,300 brand-new vehicles were sold, 7 percent more than in the same month last year.
The Brazilian market ended the year with two million light vehicles, just under the already weak level of the previous year. (awm)
