New car registrations see significant drop in Europe

Registrations for new cars have dropped by 7.1% in Europe for the month of October after a slight rise the month prior, continuing a year-by-year trend exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

October 2020 saw 1.13 million new registrations across the EU, Britain and other members of the European Free Trade Association.

Europe's five largest developers all reported negative results, with Spain's numbers fell by 21% with France dropping by 9.5%, while registrations in Italy, Germany and the UK fell by 0.2%, 3.6% and 1.6% respectively.

Brexit has dealt a number of blows to the British automotive industry, the most recent of which was the EU rejecting London's plan to avoid tariffs on exports.

Volkswagen reported sales losses of at least 11.8% while Daimler noted similar drops of 7.2%.

Germany recently announced a €2 billion stimulus for its battered automotive sector, with an additional subsidy for customers purchasing and insuring electric vehicles, in line with its new economic and environmental policies.

The pandemic itself has had disastrous consequences for the automotive sector as well as other transport and travel industries and it may take years to recover.

France is introducing a scheme to help first-time car buyers while the Italian government are considering setting aside hundreds of millions of euros to help bail its industry out.

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