Car markets in Europe suffer, two-wheelers revive

The Belgian car market is decreasing this year, as is the French car market and a lot of others in Europe. Two-wheelers, on the contrary, are having a revival.

Let’s look at the Belgian car market first. On Monday, we talked about the great figures for Mercedes and how to interpret them, today we can include the August figures.

Belgian car market down by almost 6%

In the first eight months of this year, the Belgian car market was down by 5,84%. But the substantial fluctuations of the market due to emission regulation changes (NEDC to WLTP) have played a role in this too.

If we go into details, we see the excellent performance of Mercedes (+4,93% the first eight months), against a fall of 12,7% for BMW. BMW Belgium spokesman, Jeroen Lissens, explains: “We are in the middle of the replacement of three of our most popular models (BMW 1, 3 touring, and X1); 30% of our market is waiting for the new models.”

Other brands have problems as well. Take Land Rover (-27,12%), for example, or Jaguar (-23,91%), but also Nissan (a surprising -36,4%). The big exception: in these eight months Tesla sold 2.197 cars, a staggering 278,8% more than in the same period in 2018.

With such figures, Tesla places itself before brands, like Porsche, Alfa Romeo, or Lexus. The statistics prove that long-awaited Tesla 3 has been well accepted here.

France also down

In France, the market declined 14% in August, and 3% over the first eight months of 2019. More detailed, Renault loses 6% over the whole period, Dacia 4%. PSA is doing better, Peugeot is only receding 2%, Citroën and DS are even winning (+6,71 and +0,77%). Opel, finally, goes up 4,8%.

Some other foreign brands are suffering from the French market. The VW Group progresses 2,2% for the last eight months but gets severe blows in August (-14,76% for the group, -25% for Audi). Nissan is also performing very poorly (-40% over eight months, -65% in August).

FCA is receding 10% in the last eight months and loses 25% in August. Jeep is losing 21% and 50% respectively, and Alfa Romeo a mind-blowing -65% from January till August, and -84% in August.

Like in Belgium, Daimler is the exception when we talk about premium brands. More than 17% in 8 months and +60% in August. Surprising is that the sales of Smart have progressed by 76% here.

Two-wheelers back in town

In the whole of Europe, car sales have gone down 3,1% this year, but two-wheelers have gone up 9,1%. In France, it was even 13%, and one-fifth of this total of 109.000 bikes and scooters was sold in Paris alone.

The part of electric propulsion with two-wheelers is growing much faster than with cars. The market share is still small, but the growth of electric scooters and motorbikes was 77%.

For the moment, BMW leads the market in the electrified segment, but the competition is organizing itself. Austrian KTM has associated itself with Indian Bajaj and is trying to convince Piaggio and Ducati (VW Group) to join in.

KTM is also very active in the sector of electric bicycles. It reckons to sell 65.000 of them this year and projects to sell 100.000 in 2020.

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