Recently, Jato Dynamics announced a report on sales in the European automotive market in 2021. The report notes that total sales across the European market fell by 1.7% in 2021. As the repeated epidemics disrupted the normal order of the market, problems such as lack of cores, rising raw material prices, and rising freight rates followed, so 2021 is a challenging year for the European automotive market.
PS: Data source Jato Dynamics (28 European markets)
Although it is generally showing a downward trend, low-emission models (pure electric/plug-in hybrid) have gained a glimmer of life, among which there are foreign ace products that can "step on" the old European competitors to make the list strongly, and win the sales championship in the segment, who will it be?
From the report, it can be seen that the total number of new cars registered in the European market in 2021 was 11.75 million units, and its sales performance was the lowest point since 1985, even lower than last year, with total sales down 1.7%.
The two issues of the epidemic and emissions have been the topic of great concern in recent years, and they are also the key to directly affecting the development of the entire automotive industry.
The most obvious is that due to the uncertainty of the epidemic, there has been a long-term shortage of semiconductors, and the lack of core components means that production capacity is blocked, and the situation of short supply and demand has also emerged.
The world is like this, some people are sad and some people are happy, from a general point of view, the total sales of the European automobile market have indeed fallen a lot, but in the field of new energy, it is very moist. In 2021, the total number of new energy vehicles registered in the European market was about 2.25 million units, accounting for 19% of the market, a record high.
Among them, the number of pure electric passenger car registrations was 1,205,387, an increase of 63% compared with the total number of registrations (739329 units) in 2020, and 3.4 times the total number of registrations in 2019.
Indeed, neither pure fuel vehicles nor new energy vehicles can avoid the impact of the epidemic on their production capacity, but at the same time, do not forget that they are also constrained by emission regulations, which also stimulates automakers/consumers to shift their attention to new energy vehicles, of course, this is also inseparable from some of the relevant preferential policies introduced by the local government to stimulate consumption.
However, the reason why new energy vehicles can grow rapidly is not really "a blessing in disguise", but in essence, new energy vehicles are the trend of the times, in contrast, it is more able to adapt to the present.
Since the European market is hot for electric vehicles, I think everyone has already guessed that the protagonist is Tesla Model 3. According to the report given by Jato Dynamics, the Tesla Model 3 ranked in the top 25 with a cumulative sales of 141,429 units, ranking 17th in the overall list.
Although the overall ranking is not high, it should be known that the models below the 17th place are Peugeot 3008, Volkswagen Tiguan, Mercedes-Benz A-Class and BMW 3 Series, which are the more popular models in Europe.
In addition, the Tesla Model 3 is the only model on the list that can achieve sales growth of more than 40% year-on-year for two consecutive years, which is a height that other American car brands have been difficult to reach in the European market for many years.
Although with the rapid growth momentum of Tesla Model 3, Tesla has sold a total of 167,549 units in 2021, making Tesla the most popular U.S. pure electric vehicle brand in the European market.
However, as European veteran car companies have begun to lay out the new energy field, Tesla is no longer in a thriving state, and its market share has dropped to 13.9% (31% two years ago) and begun to decline.
So can the Tesla Model Y, which was introduced in the third quarter of last year, become Tesla's needle? I'm looking forward to its next performance in the European market.