After a depressed August, the European passenger car market manages its first increase of the year in September, albeit a a small one with sales up by less than 1%. In absolute terms, September edges out July as the biggest month of 2020 so far with 1.29 million deliveries. The year-to-date figure improves only slightly to -27.9% with 8.63 million deliveries. Among the five major European markets, losses were seen in Spain (-13.5%), the UK (-4.4%) and France (-3%), while Italy (+9.5%) and Germany (+8.4%) showed solid gains.
Sales of car models (hatchback, sedan, stationwagon, coupe and convertible) are down 2.7% to 53.6% share. Crossover and SUV sales are up 5.1% to top 40.6% share, and MPV sales are up 3.7% to 5.8% share. Within these figures, EVs and PHEVs are up 166% to around 160,000 registrations in September, EVs were up 120% to nearly 92,000 deliveries and PHEVs were up 268% to just over 68,000 deliveries. The share of plug-in cars stood at 12% in September (7.1% for pure EVs alone). The Year-To-Date share of EVs and PHEVs now stands at 9% (4.9% for EVs).