July figures suggest V-shaped recovery

Car production across Europe is recovering, with new data from 27 European markets finding that figures for July were the best all year – and the highest since last September.

JATO Dynamics has reported that 1,278,521 new passenger cars were registered in July, down by only four per cent month on month from 2019.

Felipe Munoz, global analyst at JATO Dynamics, said: “Both private and business consumers are responding to the better market conditions. If the current situation continues to improve, we could start to talk about a ‘V’ shaped recovery in the European car industry. However, there are still huge uncertainties regarding how and when the pandemic will finally come to an end, therefore caution remains.”

Volumes levels since January have fallen by 35% to 6.37 million cars.

Meanwhile, the global pandemic has not influenced consumer’s interest in electrified vehicles. July 2020 was a record-breaking month for EV registrations with volume up 131% year on year to 230,700 – the first time that these vehicles were bought by more than 200,00 consumers in a single month.

As a consequence, EVs accounted for 18% of total registrations in July, far greater than their market share of 7.5% in July 2019, and 5.7% in July 2018. Half of these cars were powered by a hybrid engine (HEV), with demand soaring by 89%, while registrations for pure electrics jumped from 23,400 units in July 2019 to 53,200.