The French car market sinks further into the crisis in October – LCI

The semiconductor shortage continues to cripple the automotive market. In France, it fell 30.7% year on year in October, the drop reaching 37.3% compared to October 2019 before the pandemic, according to raw figures from the Committee of French automakers (CCFA), published Monday November 1st. If the start of 2021 had been better than the beginning of 2020, at a standstill with the Covid-19, sales have been weak again since June. “The effects of slowing orders and late deliveries linked to the semiconductor shortage are growing”, commented the firm AAAdata.

Stellantis, the result of the merger of PSA (Peugeot, Citroën, DS and Opel) and FCA (Fiat, Jeep, Alfa Romeo, etc.) remained in first place in October with 34.5% of the passenger car market (excluding utilities), but lost almost 4 points of market share with registrations falling 37.6% in one year. Its rival, the Renault group, in the process of transitioning to a strategy based more on unit margins than volumes, saw them fall by 28.7%, with a French market share of 25.7%. Registrations of the Dacia brand increased by 2.8% while those of Renault plunged by 38.1%.

Also tumbling for the first foreign group, Volkswagen, whose registrations fell by 40.3%. The German giant’s market share reached 10.1%. In total, 118,521 new passenger cars were put on the roads of France last month, against 171,050 in 2020. The month had only 21 working days this year against 22 last year.

Over the first ten months of the year, the French market is up 3.1%, with 1.379 million new cars registered. There are only 21.7% of diesel vehicles (a figure down 9.4 points in one year), while the share of hybrids has risen to 25.4% (+12 points) and that of electric vehicles at 8.9% (+2.9 points). Sedans fell below 50% of the market (-1 point to 49%), while SUVs and all-terrain vehicles rose to 43% (+4 points).

The second-hand market also experienced a significant drop in October (-13.3%), but it “continues to evolve at record levels since the start of the year, with an increase of 9.6% over ten months and more than 5 million transactions”, according to the firm AAAdata. The oldest models, ten years and older, account for 44% of this total.