December registrations of new cars grew, overall the year 2022 is in negative numbers

In December 2022, new car registrations in the EU expanded by 12.8%, marking the fifth consecutive month of growth this year. Despite this positive result, only two of the region’s four major markets recorded growth. The German and Italian car markets had an extremely strong end to 2022, posting double-digit increases of 38.1% and 21.0% respectively. Spain, on the other hand, suffered a substantial decline (-14.1%), whereas France remained stable (-0.1%).

Overall in 2022, the European Union passenger car market contracted by 4.6%, mainly due to the impact of component shortages in the first half of the year. Although the market improved from August to December 2022, cumulative volumes stand at 9.3 million units, the region’s lowest level since 1993, when 9.2 million units were registered. Among the EU’s four largest markets, only Germany managed to post growth in 2022 (+1.1%), helped by the strong result in December. The other three markets all performed worse than in 2021, with Italy posting the steepest decline (-9.7%), followed by France (-7.8%) and Spain (-5.4%).