Sales by German carmakers are weakening in Europe and the USA. Once again, a sales forecast has to be revised downwards. The only ray of hope is currently China. There, the losses in the rest of the world could even be almost compensated.
Supply problems with semiconductors have been troubling the automotive industry for months, and now demand is also weakening: the industry has therefore revised its sales expectations for the current year downwards again. The German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) is now assuming that there will only be 2.5 million new registrations in Germany in 2022.
That would be a decrease of six percent compared to the previous year. It is the third time in just a few months that the association has lowered its expectations. Most recently, the industry had expected 2.7 million new vehicles.
The delivery bottlenecks for components have now improved somewhat, it said. But gradually the restrained consumer sentiment is making itself felt. The VDA has also revised its sales forecasts significantly downwards for the European and US markets. For the USA, the VDA corrected the forecast significantly and, after a slight decline of one percent that had previously been promised, now expects sales to fall by seven percent to 13.8 million vehicles. In Europe, sales are expected to fall by four percent to 11.3 million. The association had previously assumed stagnant sales here.
Only the Chinese market is gradually recovering from the long and far-reaching corona restrictions in its own country. The association expects new registrations there to grow by nine percent to 23 million vehicles. That would be almost as many new cars as are expected to hit the roads in Europe and the USA together this year.
The global level of sales of new cars has hardly changed, it's just shifting to other regions. According to the VDA, the weak sales in the home markets are particularly affecting the suppliers, whose production is often energy-intensive and who are therefore groaning more than the manufacturers under the increased energy costs - especially since they cannot always pass them on to their end customers.
