Now, the ACEA is expecting the market to drop, in terms of sales, by 1% to 9.6 million units. Compared to the pre-pandemic 2019 figures, this represents a drop of 26% in car sales in the space of just three years.
Passenger car registrations in the EU only returned to growth in August 2022, after a solid 13 months of declines.
ACEA President, and CEO of BMW, Oliver Zipse said: “The last years have been marked by major events like Brexit, the coronavirus pandemic, semiconductor supply bottlenecks and the war in Ukraine, with its impact on prices and availability of energy.
“All of these things underline how quickly, how profoundly and how unpredictably our world is changing. This applies not least in the geopolitical context – where there are direct consequences for our globally interconnected industry and its close-knit value chains.”