According to data from JATO Dynamics for 26 European markets, 1,268,683 new passenger cars were registered last month – an increase of 13% when compared with June 2020.
Despite this increase, the market’s rate of recovery has slowed substantially relative to the growth recorded between March and May of this year.
Since the beginnining of the year, the European new car market has rebounded well, however the ongoing impact of the pandemic continues to impinge on sales momentum. The almost 1.27m units registered in June still lagged behind the 1.47m registered in 2019 and the 1.6m in 2018.
Global analyst Felipe Munoz said: “The conditions are not yet ideal and far from a total recovery. In the midterm, it is not clear whether the market will reach pre-Covid levels or not.”
Volume for the first half of 2021 totalled 6.41m units, up 27% year-on-year from 2020, but 23% lower than in H1 2019.
Low emissions cars (BEV and PHEV) continued to perform well, recording a new record total market share of 18.5% – up from 8.2% in June 2020. Registrations of BEVs totaled 126,000 units during the month, ahead of the 104,000 registered PHEV units.
Fiat, Tesla, Skoda, Volkswagen and Ford gained the largest market share in the BEV market while Cupra, Jeep, Volkswagen, Renault and Seat posted the highest market share gains in PHEVs.
Demand has been growing steadily across Europe, but significant increases in market share were posted in Norway (+24 points), Sweden (+24 points), Denmark (+21 points), Ireland (+17 points) and Germany (+15 points). In contrast, the market share of these vehicles increased by only 0.7 points in Slovakia, 1.4 points in Romania and 1.6 points in Poland.
The increasing popularity of these vehicles is also having an impact on the sales mix for certain brands. For instance, Jeep’s new plug-in models accounted for 30% of its total volume in June, compared with 0.5% in June 2020. Cupra’s sales of low emissions vehicles jumped from 0% in June 2020 to 58% last month, while BEV and PHEV models made up 72% of MG’s total volume.
In the model rankings, the Volkswagen Golf was the most popular new car amongst consumers with 27,247 units, equating to a 2.15% market share. Despite the increase of 12% from June 2020, volume fell by 27% when compared with June 2019 when its market share was 2.52%. The Golf was followed by the Tesla Model 3, which registered 25,697 units taking the year-to-date total to 66,350 units, making it the most popular electric vehicle in Europe, and the 25th best-selling model in the general rankings through to June. The Model 3 was the top-seller in Austria, Norway, Switzerland and the UK, and hit the top 10 in Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg and Sweden.
Other models that posted notable growth compared to June 2019 were the Fiat 500, Toyota Yaris, Volkswagen T-Roc, Peugeot 2008, Volkswagen T-Cross, Hyundai Tucson, Audi A3, Toyota C-HR, Hyundai Kona, BMW 3-Series and Volvo XC40.
Among the latest launches, Opel registered 7,741 units of the Mokka; 7,353 units of the Citroen C4; Volkswagen registered 7,040 units of the ID.3 and 6,347 units of the ID.4; the Skoda Enyaq found 6,011 new buyers while Cupra registered 5,967 units of the Formentor. The Samsung-built Renault Arkana registered 4,766 units, and the Ford Mach-E registered 3,002 units.