Sellers and car buyers are baffled by the succession of factors that have shaken the car market in recent months. The last one occurred last September, when gasoline-powered passenger cars were no longer the best-selling segment in Spain. They were surpassed by those driven by alternative technologies: electric, hybrid, gas and hydrogen. While those of gasoline took a market share of 40.6%, that amalgam of less polluting engines concentrated 41% of sales, according to data from Anfac, Faconauto and Ganvam. The diesels are well below, with a percentage of 18.4%.
That sorpasso it was about to become a reality in August, although the final result was 42.2% compared to 40.9% in favor of gasoline cars. And it comes after hybrid vehicles overtook diesels in May, which buyers and manufacturers themselves have ended up neglecting. In any case, and despite the September figures, in the nine months of the year gasoline has continued to be the preferred technology, concentrating 46.9% of sales. Diesel remains at 20.2% and the rest of technologies rise to 32.9%. In 2017, diesel and gasoline accounted for 94.9% of sales.
The increase in car purchases using alternative technologies has been vigorous in the last four years. In September 2017, they barely represented 5% of total registrations.
The distribution of sales for September may continue to be conditioned by the context of low registrations in which the Spanish market has been located. In the first three quarters of the year, these were 595,436 units, 33% less than in the same period in 2019, before the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. Compared to last year, there was an increase of 8.8%.
Affected by the lack of supplies, manufacturers have been revising their sales forecasts in parallel with the progress of the year. Their latest scenario is to end the year with around 900,000 vehicles registered this year, a figure they consider well below their estimates for the Spanish industry to remain attractive to manufacturers. That threshold stands at 1.2 million units.
The employers of manufacturers, dealerships and workshops and sellers maintain the same arguments to explain the drop in sales as in recent months. There is little supply of vehicles due to the lack of semiconductors that is forcing plants to stop while driving potential buyers to second-hand cars. This argument is explained by the fact that the purchase of cars by individuals fell by 21.8% compared to last year, while companies have also reduced their transactions by 15.3%. The paradox is that, just when a tourist season ends in which a greater supply has been lacking in car rental companies, the rent a car they have increased their purchases by 39.6% in September. It is explained because sales in the month of September 2020 were very low (3,850 units), so any small rebound triggers the percentage of growth.
Pessimism for the end of the year
And there is no optimism regarding the last months of the year. “The closing forecasts are lower,” says the employer Anfac, in the absence of short-term solutions to the lack of supplies of semiconductors. Faconauto, the employer’s voice of dealerships, denounces a lack of stock at the points of sale and takes for granted that this year’s sales levels will not differ from those of 2020. Meanwhile, Ganvam points to the “perfect storm” in which they add the semiconductor crisis, the pandemic, the doubts about the economic recovery and the uncertainty about the future of certain technologies.
In the list of best-selling vehicles in September there was the appearance of a car that until now did not appear in the top three, the Fiat 500. Followed by the Seat Arona and the Peugeot 2008. So far this year the leaders are the Seat Arona, the Hyundai Tucson and the Dacia Sandero. All three are urban SUVs, which shows the strength of that segment.