BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - New car registrations in the European Union were at their lowest level in almost 30 years last year. In December, there was indeed an EU-wide increase of 12.8 percent to 896,967 newly registered cars thanks to a strong final spurt in the major markets of Germany and Italy, as the European industry association Acea announced in Brussels on Wednesday. For the year as a whole, however, 9.26 million passenger cars were registered, 4.6 percent fewer than in the already weak previous year - and thus fewer cars than at any time since 1993.

According to experts, future prospects are not exactly rosy either. Although the supply bottlenecks for semiconductors and preliminary products have eased somewhat, said industry expert Peter Fuß from the consulting firm EY. The industry's ability to deliver will continue to improve over the course of the year, he said, so that as the availability of new cars increases, their delivery times should also decrease. "It is unclear, however, how great the demand from companies and private individuals will still be then," Fuß qualified. "That's because the economy is weakening, and even if the feared recession fails to materialize, companies and private individuals will remain reluctant to order new cars."

According to the expert, there is much to suggest that demand for new cars will remain well below pre-Corona levels. According to EY, new registrations last year were 29 percent lower than in the pre-crisis year of 2019.

In Germany, the expiry of subsidies for plug-in hybrids at the end of the year and falling premiums on the purchase of battery-powered cars had caused pull-forward effects in December. Of the largest EU car markets, car registrations also rose slightly for the year as a whole only in Germany (+1.1 percent), while Italy (down 9.7 percent), France (down 7.8 percent) and Spain (down 5.4 percent) saw a downward trend. Car manufacturers in Europe complained primarily about inadequate parts supplies, including electronic chips.

The market leader in the EU continued to be Volkswagen's core brand VW Passenger Cars, with just over one million cars sold. With around 2.3 million cars, the VW Group as a whole was also ahead of Peugeot, Fiat and Opel parent Stellantis (1.8 million cars). The Renault Group was in third place with just under 985,000 cars. BMW, with all its brands, came to 624,940 new registrations, and Mercedes-Benz to 549,023.

The EU was not the only major auto market worldwide to record declines. In Europe, i.e. including Great Britain and other countries such as Norway and Switzerland, 11.3 million new passenger cars were registered, around 4 percent fewer than in the previous year. In the USA, according to figures from the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), there was an 8 percent drop in sales of passenger cars and larger cars such as pickups to 13.7 million vehicles. In Japan, sales fell by 6 percent to 3.4 million passenger cars sold.

In contrast, according to the VDA, China, the largest car market, saw a 10 percent increase in sales to 23.2 million new vehicles last year. China is the largest and most important market for German carmakers Volkswagen (with its subsidiaries Audi and Porsche), Mercedes-Benz and BMW./men/mne/jha/