Car sales to increase but concerns remain
Despite a record-low base of comparison due to the covid pandemic, sales of new cars continued to decline in the EU last year because of the microchip shortage.
With chip supplies expected to stabilise in 2022, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) now forecasts that passenger car registrations in the EU will return to growth this year, rising by 7.9% to reach 10.5 million units.
However, this would still be almost 20% below the pre-crisis sales levels of 2019. In light of the European Chips Act to be published on February 8, ACEA is urging the EU to reduce its reliance on overseas suppliers to avoid such damage to strategic European industries in the future.
Electrically-chargeable cars continued to gain overall market share, now accounting for almost 1 in every 5 new cars sold across the European Union.
Oliver Zipse, ACEA president and CEO of BMW Group, said: “The strong performance of electrically-chargeable cars is very welcome news.
“However, we cannot forget that this is still quite a fragile market, which is highly reliant on support measures such as purchase incentives and, above all, the widespread availability of charging infrastructure.”
The pace of infrastructure roll-out is lagging behind consumer demand for electrically-chargeable cars. Over the past five years, sales of electric cars have been growing four times faster than the build-up of charging points, according to ACEA.
“Electric car sales increased more than 10-fold between 2017 and 2021, whereas the number of public chargers in the EU grew by less than 2.5 times over the same period,” said Mr Zipse. “If this situation is not urgently addressed by introducing ambitious targets for all EU member states, we will hit a roadblock very soon.”
Image: The BMW Group will power production of the new electric BMW iX* and BMW i4 at Plants Dingolfing and Munich entirely with regional green hydroelectricity.
