German car production keeps increasing

Output of passenger cars by German carmakers has increased notably, Kallanish learns from industry association VDA.

At 302,500 units, June brought a 19% output increase over the corresponding month of 2021, and was the consecutive month to see a year-on-year increase. This is an apparent change in trend, as production in January-June, at 1,685,800 units, was still 3% below the first six months of 2021.

VDA does not state if the recent rebound can be attributed to increased activity related to better supply of semiconductors. The recent increase is hardly surprising if seen against a base effect of very low activity last year, due to both the coronavirus plus the shortage of semiconductors.

VDA therefore suggests to take the pre-Covid year of 2019 as a comparison, and now the figure gets inverted: June 2022 is still 19% below June 2019, and the first half of 2022 is a considerable 32% below H1 2019.

Still, the recent uptick in production could anticipate a trend not yet registered in domestic sales of new cars. At 224,600 in June, new registrations were 18% below June 2021, and 33% below June 2019.

Christian Koehl Germany