With 787.626 units registered, marking the 13th consecutive month of growth, the new car market in August in Europe had 21% more registrations than last year. Sales were led by the Tesla Model Y ahead of the VW T-Roc and Peugeot 208.
Although August is usually a slower month for car sales, the double-digit percentage increase shows that the EU market is recovering from last year's component shortage. Most markets saw double-digit growth, including the top three: Germany (+37.3%), France (+24.3%) and Italy (+11.9%).
From January to August, the number of new car registrations in the EU increased significantly (+17,9%), reaching 7.1 million units. Despite this growth, the market still lags behind the level before the COVID pandemic when 9 million vehicles were registered in the same period of 2019.
In the eighth month of this year, the market share of electric cars passed 20% for the first time (from 11.6% in August last year), surpassing diesel cars for the second time this year and becoming the choice of third most popular for car buyers. Hybrid-electric vehicles maintained their position as the second choice of customers with 24% of the market. Although petrol cars are still the most popular choice, their market share has fallen from 38.7 to 32.7 percent.
In the sales statistics by brands and models, the biggest increase in sales was again recorded by Tesla, which delivered over 34 thousand cars in August, which is an increase of 242.2% compared to last year when this number was below 10 thousand the car. Tesla Model Y ended August as the best-selling model in Europe with 19.725 deliveries, "winning" the award for the fifth time in eight months as the best-selling car.
The VW T-Roc was second in a close battle with the Peugeot 208, although it will be sidelined until the end of the year due to the suspension of parts production at the Slovenian plant following the recent floods.
