3rd ICAI 2024

International Conference on Automotive Industry 2024

Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic

Figure 11: New passenger car registrations in EU15+EFTA (in millions of units)

Source: ACEA (2022), Eurostat; Note GDP growth for EU15 countries In terms of absolute numbers, European brands have long dominated the Western European passenger car market. This is even though their sales fell by 26% between 2001 and 2013 to less than 8.5 million cars sold. However, Japanese brands experienced an even greater decline (of one-third) between 2007 and 2013. But then, by 2019, sales of both European and Japanese brands in the EU15+EFTA had picked up again. New registrations of US brands ranged between 1.3-1.5 million cars sold per year from their peak in 1991 until 2007. However, from around 2007 onwards, they gradually lost ground and were overtaken by Korean brands for the first time in 2021. 3 Better than absolute numbers, the market shares of carmakers from the different continents tell us more about their market position in Western Europe. European carmakers have lost their share only relatively slightly by 5 percentage points over three decades to 72% in 2021. Japanese carmakers have managed to maintain their share at around 12% (although in some years they have had a 14% share). US carmakers have been losing share, particularly over the last decade, while Korean carmakers have been gaining their share.

3 Chinese brands have so far had virtually no market share (according to ACEA data) in Europe (Volvo is considered European brand for the purposes of this study, even though it is majority owned by a Chinese company).

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