The reasons are many, but the facts are very clear. New cars are always more expensive: +6% in one year, +15% in three years. Manufacturers may need to control their prices in the future, even if the trend is no longer to favor volumes. We just hit the worst sales since 1980 in the first quarter.
With the open days, the arrival of new products, the legendary smile of the “car salesmen” in the spring always shines. In principle… Also this year you have to have a little more imagination to take advantage of it. Auto trade professionals only have a few reasons to be happy and delivery can take a long time. The official figures for the first quarter of 2022 take France back to the last century, exactly to the year 1980!
Officially because of problems related to the lack of certain components, sometimes ridiculous, but maybe also because of the prices offered at the dealer. Observers see it and prove it: the car has never cost its lovers so dear. This applies daily with the price of petrol and other fuels, that of tolls, parking spaces (we are not talking about speed cameras, always in top condition!), it is also true “at the source” with the prices offered. Manufacturers are struggling to get rid of their electric models, which are produced in large numbers to order or almost from Europe, and have discreetly chosen to favor increasingly expensive offers to compensate. We can understand them, but we should not be too surprised by the sad results of the moment.
Tesla is climbing, but so are prices!
Not just because of the high prices, of course. As of New Year’s Day, only 365,360 new cars have been delivered to their new owners. A decrease of 17% compared to 2021 and 34%, a doubling, if we refer to the last normal vintage, 2019, the one before Covid-19. Count 190,000 fewer registrations…
The pandemic is still disrupting the smooth functioning of the sector, especially in China, where factories producing essential components are regularly shut down, European manufacturers still struggle to find the famous semiconductors and, to top it all, the war in Ukraine was closed the table.
In the month of March alone, the Stellantis galaxy (Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat, Jeep, etc.) saw a drop of almost 30%, Renault-Dacia by more than 15%, the Volkswagen group by 16.38%. Only the South Korean cousins Kia (+4%) and Hyundai (+7%) who did not forget to add a few hundred euros to the catalog, with Tesla (+47% thanks to the success of its Model 3, but only it will soon cost much more and the customer will also lose €10,000 in aid…) can boast of continuing its progress, albeit with a considerable margin compared to the pillars of the market.
The electric, so expensive, now at the level of diesel…
Even if their progress is never fast enough for the greenest of us, 100% electric cars, very very expensive despite all the facilities on offer, today reach a market share of 13%, just behind diesel, which drops to a level, necessarily historical low, of 14%. More surprisingly, the slowdown of the hybrid (-9%) especially the rechargeable hybrid (which therefore needs charging and is not comfortable) and the micro-hybrids offered by the brands to improve their “health passports”. On the other hand, no surprise for alternative energy sources such as LPG or of course the very popular bioethanol at the moment and so well exploited by Ford: they go to 152% but with some registrations still in the margin.
