New Car Sales Down In 2018 But Not Disastrous
Friday, 18. January 2019
The usual headlines appeared as soon as the new car sales figures were announced. Headlines such as New Car Sales Fall Off A Cliff made it seem like new car sales had dropped by 50% from the previous year. They didn’t, the drop was 7% or 100,000 cars dropping from just over 2.5 million in 2017 to just under 2.4 million in 2018. So not the disaster that reports would have you believe.
With an average of 200,000 new cars being registered every month keeping us in second place to Germany in the EU is hardly a major disaster. Believe it or not Jaguar increased by 4% but then their problems, along with their sister marque, LandRover have suffered from a drop in demand in China, the US and Middle East.
It seems that the main drops were amongst the volume producers such as Ford, Vauxhall, Nissan and Audi. Changes to the emissions regulations threw a massive spanner in the works. Manufacturing slowed as some manufacturers struggled to meet the emissions levels with some stopping production altogether. Then having sold off all the pre-emissions tests cars there were no new cars in stock to sell so drivers either extended current agreements or took on a used car.
So my feeling, given the circumstances is that new car sales in 2018 were pretty buoyant. My real concern was over alternative fuels. But first a few words about diesel cars. 62% of new cars bought in 2018 were pure petrol cars compared to 32% pure diesel. You may think this is a good thing given the reports about emissions and the need to get diesel cars off our roads. The fact is that it is old diesel cars that we need to get off the road. New diesels are virtually particulate (soot) free and whilst NOx emissions are a little higher CO2 emissions are lower so in terms of damage there is very little to choose.
The question that never seems to be raised is that of mileage. Clearly, if people drove their cars less they would reduce emissions irrespective of the fuel used. The sad news is that just 5% of new cars registered in 2018 were either diesel/electric or petrol/electric hybrids. And even worse for the environment was that just 0.7% were pure electric cars. This of course wasn’t helped by the Government removing the grants completely from hybrid cars and reducing those on electric cars.
The car industry was in good shape last year but the move towards a better environment is flagging badly! Something needs to be done and the Government needs to give better direction to diesel/petrol drivers as we are about to see warnings in the press again about the Ozone layer as a result of the increase in petrol car drivers increasing CO2 emissions. By Graham Hill
