August is traditionally a not very significant month for the car market, thanks to collective holidays. However, recent data suggest a more complex situation, with a drastic drop in registrations. Passenger Car registrations recorded a worrying -14%, corresponding to 11,000 fewer registration plates. Light Commercial Vehicles also suffered a -33% collapse, with 3,500 vehicles missing.
A market in difficulty
Despite the working day being shorter than in August 2023 (21 versus 22), the drop in new license plates is difficult to justify. This negative trend comes after an already disappointing July, confirming the “matchstick” effect of the incentives introduced in June: after an increase of +15% in that month, the market saw an immediate exhaustion of funds for electric cars. In August, electric car sales were dropped by 40%, partly due to Tesla’s summer hiatus, which saw it lose 80%.
Incentives and residual funds
Currently, they remain available 89 million euros for cars with emissions between 61 and 135 g/km of CO2, and 85 million for those with emissions between 21 and 60 g/km. However, despite the presence of these incentives, the market for new registrations shows signs of stagnation. After eight months, 1,084,000 new Passenger Cars were registered, with a modest increase of just 40,000 units (+3.8%). All distribution channels showed negative performances, except for short-term rental. Private registrations decreased by -9%, but still gained a market share of 63%. Direct business purchases suffered a -21%, while long-term rental saw a decline of -24%. For the first time this year, self-registrations also fell, recording a -22%, although the market share remains above 12%.
The situation of commercial vehicles
Particular attention should be paid to the sector of Light Commercial Vehicles. The -33% in August is alarming, with all channels in difficulty, especially long-term rental, which saw a -39%. Short-term rental suffered a collapse of -71%, albeit on already modest volumes. Despite this, from January to August, the LCV sector remains positive with a +11%although the trend is becoming less bright.
The Dataforce Report
“Apparently the month of August was a complete debacle – commented Laura Gobbini, Project Management & Data Analyst of Dataforce Italia – But a more careful analysis of the trend of the last 3 months shows that PCs closed up 4.5% and LCVs substantially in line. Perhaps manufacturers and operators did their sums before going on holiday and decided not to fire too many cartridges in a month that is historically not very significant for the year’s result? What is certain is that if cars more or less keep pace (in the coming months other ‘incentivised’ registrations will arrive given that the reservations made in June are valid for 9 months), for commercial vehicles we can start to talk about a stalemate: the continuous about-faces on the so-called ‘green deal’ and the conflicting news on investments coming from OEMs are only increasingly confusing those who need to expand or renew the crowd of commercial vehicles, inducing an almost total paralysis of the market”.
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