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The French automotive market down 7.83% in 2022. The four months of growth in the second half therefore failed to raise the bar. This sector is not confronted with one but with crises: shortages of electronic chips, difficulties of delivery for lack of drivers, increase in the cost of materials.
The automotive sector relapsed in 2022, despite four months of growth in the second half of the year, both in the new and second-hand market. All this after a catastrophic 2020, with closed dealerships and a sluggish economy, the sector had not rebounded in 2021.
If we compare to the pre-Covid figures, the drop in the number of new cars sold in France is even more brutal. A total of 1,529,035 new passenger cars were put into circulation last year, compared to 1,659,003 in 2021. This compares to 2.2 million in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to figures published on Sunday by the Automotive Platform (PFA), which represents manufacturers and equipment manufacturers.
“It is a drop which is due to the problems which arrive after the Covid, that is to say that we first had a problem of semiconductors, of electronic chips which do not arrive for the manufacture of our vehicles. Then, other problems were added, in particular that of deliveries. We had huge problems with drivers to be able to deliver the cars that had been ordered,” underlines François Roudier, communication manager of the PFA, joined by Pauline Gléize.
The crises accumulate, explained François Roudier, listing in addition to ” the problem of the availability of electronic components, the difficulties of delivering vehicles, due to a lack of drivers, which were accentuated with the war in Ukraine », « rising material costs and overpriced fuel ».
Rise in electric car sales
In this gloomy climate, the share of electric cars continues to progress, reaching 13% of total registrations in 2022, compared to 10% last year and barely 1% four years earlier. An increase achieved mainly at the expense of diesel engines, which represent less than 16% of registrations in 2022, down more than 5 points compared to the previous year, and to a lesser extent petrol, which remains the category the most chosen by new car buyers with 37% of the market.
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« We see that we are making quite significant progress. (electric), and then the diesel begins to disappear from the radar, remaining only for the big rollers in rurality. So we end up with a changing market, rather high-end vehicles. We also see it in the decline in vehicles in the lower economic category, that is to say small vehicles, for vehicles that the French prefer a little more SUV, a little more statutory. And that too is a change “, also believes François Roudier, of the PFA.
For manufacturers, continues François Roudier, « as they had fewer electronic components, they all tried, on a global level – it’s not just in France – to put them on the vehicles on which they had the most margin. So we rather played the margin against the volume ».
The second-hand market, which had taken off in 2021, is in sharp decline (-13%) with 5.26 million units, its lowest level since 2009, according to provisional data from the firm NGC Data published by the Argus.
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