The EU auto market is expected to return to growth this year, but is still 20% below 20% lower than in 2019.

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The European Association of Automakers (ACEA) predicted on Tuesday that the EU car market will resume growth in 2022 after two years of decline, but car registrations will be 20 percent below 20 percent of 20 percent of 2019 levels as chip shortages continue to hamper production.

The ACEA said in a statement that a steady supply of chips would bring the EU's car registrations to 10.5 million in 2022, up 7.9 percent year-on-year. ACEA also urged the EU to increase regional chip production to reduce its reliance on external suppliers to avoid such damage to Strategic European Industries in the future.

Against the backdrop of last year's shrinking car market due to supply chain issues, rechargeable cars continued to gain overall market share and now account for nearly a fifth of new cars sold in the EU.

Oliver Zipse, President and CEO of bmw group, said: "The strong performance of electric vehicles is very welcome news. However, we must not forget that this is still a rather fragile market, which is highly dependent on support measures such as purchase incentives and, most importantly, the wide availability of charging infrastructure. ”

At present, the pace of infrastructure construction in Europe is far behind consumer demand for electric vehicles. In fact, over the past five years, sales of electric vehicles in the EU have grown four times faster than charging points.

Zipse said: "Between 2017 and 2021, the sales of electric vehicles increased by more than 10 times, while the number of public charging stations in the EU increased by less than 2.5 times over the same period. If we don't set ambitious targets for all EU member states as soon as possible, we will soon run into obstacles. ”

The ACEA urged Parliament and Council to vigorously push forward the European Commission's original Charging Infrastructure Act (AFIR) to ensure that Europe has a sufficiently dense network of charging and refueling infrastructure.