Sales of new commercial vehicles in the European Union picked up considerably again in September. According to the European car branch association ACEA, sales were up by more than 13 percent. However, this is still far from making up for the backlog that had already fallen earlier this year.
Last month, a total of 163,512 vans, trucks and buses were registered. Viewed over the first nine months of the year, European sales are still on average nearly 25 percent behind compared to the same period last year. Light commercial vehicles weighing less than 3.5 tons, such as delivery vans, account for 84 percent of the total number of registrations.
The automotive industry has been severely affected by the corona crisis this year. Yet recently there were several car manufacturers who noticed that the question of what is recovering. Possibly a factor in the September figures is that companies that actually wanted to purchase new commercial vehicles in the spring, due to all the uncertainty, waited a number of months before making a purchase.
In all the major car countries, such as Germany (17.6 percent), Italy (17.8 percent) and France (15.1 percent), there were significant gains in September. In the Netherlands, the recovery was limited to a growth of more than 2 percent, to 6,345 vehicles. Over the first nine months of this year, commercial vehicle sales here are 27 percent behind on the same period in 2019.