Last month global sales of passenger cars once again continued their recovery. On the Asian markets and in Russia in particular, business in new cars maintained its positive trend. In the USA, too, growth in sales figures improved again. In Western Europe by contrast, demand for passenger cars stayed, as expected, below the previous year’s high level that was buoyed up by the bonus for more environmentally friendly new cars. But here, too, sales are now not falling as fast.
Many Asian passenger car markets have recorded high rates of expansion this year. The current dynamic developments in growth are indeed getting weaker, as expected, but demand in Asia is continuing to develop well. In India September sales of passenger cars rose by nearly 29 per cent, and so the year-to-date increase in sales is 32 per cent. On the Chinese market passenger car sales climbed by 22 per cent. Since the beginning of 2010 over 8 million vehicles have been supplied in <link http: www.foundry-planet.com china-foundry-industry.html _top external-link-new-window>China (+38 per cent). In the first seven months of this year car sales have also risen sharply in Indonesia (+69 per cent) and Thailand (+60 per cent).
On the other hand, business in new cars in Japan suffered a slight drop. In September demand went down by 3 per cent owing to the termination of the scrapping programme. In the current year, however, the number of new registrations in Japan has increased by nearly one fifth to 3.5 million vehicles.
On the US market a good 956,200 light vehicles (passenger cars and light trucks) were sold in September. Sales were up by 28 per cent, far above the weak value from the previous year. Since the beginning of this year, sales of passenger cars and light trucks in the USA have risen by 10 per cent.
In Brazil the number of new registrations of light vehicles last month was slightly down on the same month last year (-2 per cent). With nearly 2.4 million vehicles sold, vehicle business in Brazil has expanded by 7 per cent since the beginning of the year. In neighbouring Argentina around 477,200 light vehicles were sold up to and including September, which means that sales figures rose by almost 40 per cent.
In Europe market trends tended to be less lively. On the Western European markets the volume of new registrations shrank, as expected. With 1.2 million vehicles sold, the September drop in sales came to only about 10 per cent. So demand has already increased by nearly 7 per cent compared to August. In the first nine months of the year passenger car sales in Western Europe were 3 per cent down on the 2009 level, because some countries still had incentive measures running in the first half-year. In the new EU Member States demand is gradually becoming stable. In the month just ended, the number of new registrations was up by 9 per cent. Passenger car sales are still at a low level despite the increasing tendency towards recovery. In the EU-10 almost 571,500 new vehicles have been registered this year (-10 per cent).
By contrast, strong September growth was seen on the Russian market. Sales of passenger cars (incl. light commercial vehicles) climbed to nearly 186,000 units, which was a rise of more than half (+55 per cent). For six months Russia has had an incentive scheme promoting purchases of new cars made by local companies by offering a state scrapping bonus. This year so far demand has risen by a good 18 per cent to 1.3 million passenger cars – due in part to the economic recovery that is becoming apparent.
