Chip shortage causes bus shortage
International sales of new passenger cars are not going well and that of light commercial vehicles is also lagging behind. More than 18 percent fewer vans were sold in the European Union in February than in the same month last year, according to figures from ACEA.
In the European Union, 106,899 new light commercial vehicles were sold in February, 18.2 percent less than in the same month of 2021. January was also not a best sales month, which means that sales of vans in the first two months of this year in the EU is more than 16 percent behind that in the same period last year.
In the Netherlands, 4,899 new company cars were registered in February, almost 20 percent less than in the same month last year. A significant drop in sales, but in other EU countries the commercial vehicle sector was hit harder. Sales of vans in Spain, for example, fell by 27 percent, in Lithuania, Ireland, Croatia and Belgium by more than 30 percent and in Austria by 54 percent. In Cyprus (+25 percent), Greece (+10 percent), Latvia (+36 percent), Slovakia (+31 percent) and Portugal (+8 percent) a remarkable growth in the sale of delivery vans can be observed.
According to ACEA, the general decline in commercial vehicle sales is – you guessed it – related to the shortage of computer chips.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl