Passenger Car Market in July 2020 Slightly Below the Level of July 2019

A total of 315,000 new passenger cars were registered in Germany in July – 5 percent below the level of July 2019. This decrease is the smallest recorded to date in 2020. A total of 1.5 million new passenger-car registrations were reported during the first seven months of the current year (-30 percent).

Demand built up during the unusually weak past months, in which dealerships and vehicle registration offices could work to only a limited extent. However, this upswing in demand can only partially offset the slump of the past few months. Although foreign incoming orders were again above the previous year's level (+21 percent), 22 percent fewer domestic orders in total were received from January to July.

Foreign orders received in July 2020 were at roughly the level of July 2019. So far, however, foreign incoming orders in 2020 have been 21 percent below the level of 2019. The figures for July could justify cautious optimism that the expected recovery will occur slowly during the second half of the year.

In July 334,000 passenger cars rolled off production lines in Germany (-6 percent). The cumulative seven-month figure for 2020 was 1.8 million units (-36 percent). Export business is still weak, with 242,800 passenger cars delivered to customers worldwide (-15 percent). So far in 2020, barely 1.4 million vehicles have been exported (-36 percent).

Hildegard Müller, President of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), stressed: "We won't be able to speak of normal conditions for a long time yet, but we are moving forward again after the weeks of production standstill. We expect that the negative numbers will slowly shrink – in comparison with the corresponding months of the previous year – during the last half of 2020. We expect to see about 2.8 million new passenger-car registrations for the entire year in Germany – a drop of about 23 percent. These forecasts are all based on the assumption that efforts to contain the corona pandemic in Europe – but also in other parts of the world – are successful."

The VDA President added: "The results of the Covid-19 pandemic place industrial companies – both manufacturers and suppliers – under enormous pressure. Capacities have to be adapted to the decreased demand. We are also experiencing the major effects of the transformation characterized by massive investments in electromobility, alternative powertrains and digitization." She continued: "Unfortunately, we thus have to expect a further decline in employment. At present the high tension in the workforce is still masked slightly by the short-term work affecting mainly suppliers."