Sales of passenger cars in the European Union last month increased by 3.1 percent from a year earlier, to almost 934,000 units. This made September the first month of 2020 in which car sales rose on an annual basis, reports the European trade association ACEA.
The car industry was hit hard by the pandemic. With factories temporarily shut down this spring, fewer cars were delivered and many dealers closed as a precaution, causing sales to plummet. In May, for example, car sales were halved.
The sector slowly recovered. However, the fact that there was a plus across Europe in September hides the large differences per country. Spain and France saw year-on-year car sales decline by 13.5 percent and 3 percent respectively, while more cars were registered in Germany (plus 8.4 percent) and Italy (plus 9.5 percent) .
Over the first nine months of this year, ACEA Europe-wide measures a decrease of almost 29 percent. In total, seven million cars have been registered since the turn of the year, almost 2.9 million fewer than a year earlier.
The Netherlands
In the Netherlands, the sale of new cars in September was still seriously affected by the corona crisis, sector organizations Bovag and Rai Vereniging previously indicated. Here sales were more than a fifth lower than a year earlier. That is a similar decrease to August.