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2019 Europe Auto Sales Figures – By Manufacturer (Automaker Rankings)

2019 Europe Automotive Sales by Automaker – The Best-Selling Automotive Manufacturers By Sales Volume

Car sales in Europe were up 1.3% in 2019 to the highest annual volume since 2008, at 15.66 million sales. Sales were up in each of the last four quarters of the year, with an exceptional 22% gain in December. There are two reasons for this sudden surge in sales: first there is the depressed level at the end of 2018 due to the introduction of the new WLTP fuel economy and emissions standards by September 2018, and secondly manufacturers were rushing to register inefficient models in 2019 before the new average fleet emissions standards came into effect at January 2020. From this date, the average emission for each car sold in Europe by a manufacturer should be 95 g/km or lower, with potentially enormous fines if this standard is not met.

Therefore, manufacturers were rushing to register unsold inefficient vehicles before this date. In January 2020, we’ll see that manufacturers with a relatively inefficient fleet will see a significantly reduced sales volume while we’ll also see a jump in sales for electric and plug-in hybrid models for which deliveries have been postponed until the new year (the Mercedes-Benz EQC is one of the most significant examples of this). The only caveat in this last prediction is that there was an enormous spike in EV deliveries in The Netherlands in December due to a tax increase on this type of vehicle as a company car by January 2020, but that effect might be neglectable considering The Netherlands is just a small part of the European market, and that EV deliveries here were prioritized over other markets which has created a delivery backlog that needs to be filled in the first quarter of 2020.

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