The European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) has said that the EU’s new car market remained far from robust in the first half of 2015, despite year-on-year growth of 8.2% over the period.
Instead, the body said growth was largely derived from supporting practices such as the Spanish scrapping scheme and support from manufactures, such as rental and dealer cars and self-registrations.
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In addition, it noted the growth came from a low base, and that EU sales still need to recover from the losses registered since the recession to avoid the fleet gradually aging.
Worldwide, global new passenger car sales increased 1.4% year-on-year over the first half of the year, to 36.1m car sales. The ACEA said this growth was mainly driven by the Chinese market, which grew 6.3% over the period, and represented over a quarter of all car sales.
Production and trade
8.3m cars were produced in the EU over the first half of 2015, 5.8% above the number recorded in the same period of 2014.
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By GlobalDataDespite overall growth, results between countries varied. France and Germany both posted declining production levels over the period (down 1.1% and 0.4% respectively), while the UK posted a meagre 0.3% growth.
Instead much of the production growth came from Spain and Italy, where car sales rose 22% and 15.2% year-on-year respectively, and Central Europe.
Over the first half of the year the EU exported 2.9m passenger cars worth 63.5bn, and imported 1.2m cars, worth 15.2bn, giving the EU a trade surplus of 48.2bn for the first half of the year, up 7.6% compared to the same period in 2014.
