EU passenger car registrations fall 14% on year in H1: ACEA

New passenger car registrations in the European Union fell 15.4% year on year in June to 886,510 units, bringing the total sales for the first half of 2022 to 4.6 million units, down 14% year on year, according to European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) data released July 15.

June was the 11th consecutive month of decline, with the top three markets — Germany, France and Italy — all seeing double-digit losses, although the monthly volume was up 12% month on month to the highest level since June 2021, the data showed.

The auto market has been facing supply issues due to the ongoing semiconductor shortage, which in turn has impacted production.

This has also somewhat impacted steel demand, with Platts assessing domestic HRC prices in Northern Europe at Eur855/mt ex-works Ruhr July 14, 2.3% higher than it was at the start of 2022, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights data.

In Germany, the largest EU car market, new car registrations drop 18.1% year on year in June to 224,558 units, which was 8.4% higher than the previous month and at a three-month high.

German H1 car registrations amounted to 1.2 million units, down 11% on the year.

In France, the second largest market, sales for the month dropped 14.2% on the year, but rose 34.9% on the month to 171,087 units, the highest monthly level since June 2021.

Similarly, car sales in Italy dropped 15.0% on the year to 127,209 units, but climbed 4.9% from May to the highest volume since June 2021.

H1 car sales in France totaled 771,980 units, down 16.3% on the year, while sales in Italy dropped 22.7% to 684,027 units.

In Spain, 89,252 units were sold in June, falling 7.8% on the year, but up 5% on the month to the highest volume since May 2021. This brought the H1 total to 407,740 units, down 10.7% year on year.

— Jacqueline Holman