The European car market registered its sixth consecutive month of decline in February 2019, as 1.14 million vehicles were registered. This was largely because February marked a month of uncertainty for many of the bigger European markets, such as Spain, where registrations fell by 10% amongst political turmoil, and the Netherlands, where a change in tax on pure electric vehicles contributed to the 15% drop in overall registrations. The Swedish and Finnish markets also saw declines of 15% and 11%, respectively, as the two countries continued to struggle to come to grips with the introduction of WLTP.
Conversely, registrations were up by a huge 36% in Romania, due to the Government’s scrappage scheme in Q4-18, which led to an increase in vehicle deliveries in Q1-19. Denmark also recorded a strong result in February, with volume up by 8% due to an increase in its EV and PHEV registrations. This was mirrored in Norway, where nearly twice as many zero-emission cars were sold than in February 2018, and the Tesla Model 3 and VW e-Golf were the two best-selling cars.
The most notable result from February was the strong performance of pure electric vehicles (BEVs). Although their market share remained marginal at 1.9%, their volume increased by a huge 92% to 20,000 registrations. BEVs continued to gain traction in markets like Norway, where they counted for 40% of overall registrations, and the Netherlands, where they counted for 7%. Demand also increased by 81% in Germany, which was the largest market for BEVs in February.
This increase can be explained by the introduction of new models – most notably the Tesla Model 3. The hotly anticipated car excelled during its first full month on the European market and became the best-selling BEV. The Model 3 quickly outsold other big players like the Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe, despite being more expensive and only available for a short amount of time. Felipe Munoz, JATO’s global analyst, commented, “The performance of the Model 3 is remarkable, given we normally don’t see this kind of result until four or five months after a new car has hit the roads.”
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SOURCE: JATO
