With 284 593 units registered in October, the German car market (“only” Europe's biggest market) grew 13% last month, according to KBA data.
The significant rise results from the “hangover” of a year ago, resulting from the introduction of the WLTP, which led to a generalized drop in new car sales in Europe in the last quarter of 2018.
The rise also reflects an increase in sales to fleets and… the recovery of diesel.
But let's go by parts. With regard to fleets, in October sales grew 16%. In the private sector, the German market saw growth of 6.8%. As for the brands, Porsche, Audi, Tesla, Alfa Romeo and Renault were the ones that achieved the best results in October.
Diesel growing again
They may be threatened and have even been abandoned by several brands, but Diesel models continue to sell and in the month of October they rose 9.6% , gaining a market share of 30.9%.
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Despite this market share being the lowest since the year 2000, according to Reinhard Zirpel, president of the VDIK importers association, this result stopped the trend of falling sales of Diesel models in the German market — a trend that has been observed in the market German since the beginning of the year.
As for the rest of the market, in gasoline models, sales grew 4.5% in October (taking a 57.7%) market share. In trams, growth was 47%, but the market share was 1.7%. Finally, sales of hybrids grew the most (139%) reaching a share of 9.3%.