In Austria, fewer cars were newly registered in 2021 than in 2020, with new registrations falling to their lowest level in 37 years. According to Statistics Austria, 239,803 new cars on Austrian roads means a decrease of 3.6 percent compared to the previous year and a decrease of 27.2 percent compared to the year before the crisis, 2019. This year, too, car importers and vehicle dealers do not expect it to be noticeably better. However, the trend towards e-cars and high-powered SUVs is clear.
Contrary to the general downward trend, registrations of passenger cars with “alternative drives” have risen by 80 percent. Two thirds of these were hybrid drives, i.e. vehicles with electric and diesel or petrol engines. Pure electric vehicles, however, came with 33,366 vehicles on a registration share of 13.9 percent. Private individuals hardly buy e-cars However, this trend has hardly reached private individuals – 84 percent of e-cars have been registered by companies, said Peter Laimer, motor vehicle expert Statistics Austria, on Monday at the presentation of the annual figures. The reasons are obvious for Günther Kerle, spokesman for the Austrian car importers and Klaus Edelsbrunner, chairman of the federal committee of the vehicle trade: There are no charging facilities and the “tariff jungle” at the public charging stations cannot be seen by private individuals. That still prevents private individuals from switching to an electric car. “The private market for electric mobility doesn’t really want to get off the ground,” says Kerle. Large, high-capacity SUVs are booming Contrary to the general trend, this segment grew by almost a fifth, according to Laimer. This is reflected in the engine output: in the 3500 to 4000 ccm capacity class, there was growth of 15 percent. From the point of view of the industry representatives, however, this has not only to do with customer demand. Rather, the car companies are interested in first delivering e-cars with the scarce chips in order to avoid compensation payments due to excessive CO2 emissions from the fleet and then high-priced vehicles with a high profit margin. In the case of cheaper small vehicles, on the other hand, there are delivery times of up to one year. Used cars are becoming more expensive The scarcity has meant that companies in particular have to forego the generous discounts that have been customary up to now when buying vehicles. According to Edelsbrunner, private individuals would feel this less strongly. Since there are hardly any discounts, further cuts – and the resulting price increases – are not to be expected. For used cars, there are price increases of 10 to 15 percent. The vehicle trade is also getting the feeling that customers today often have a car repaired instead of buying a new one or extending a leasing contract instead of starting a new one. The used car market for electric vehicles is still very small, 12,000 vehicles were recently in this category , but most of them were demonstration vehicles, according to Edelsbrunner. No good prospects … “We assume that 2022 will also be a very difficult year,” says Kerle. The result should be as weak as in 2021, because the Covid pandemic is not over yet and the semiconductor bottlenecks are also likely to last the whole year. Edelsbrunner also expects the market to stagnate at the current low level and around 240,000 new registrations for 2022. It will probably be years before the previous level is reached again. “Nevertheless, we are looking positively into the future,” said Kerle. Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens) pointed out in a broadcast that the proportion of e-cars in all new registrations had doubled compared to 2020. “Emission-free e-cars are the future on our roads,” concludes the minister. Subsidies for e-cars would play an important part in this and would therefore continue in 2020. Emission-free cars for private individuals would be funded with 5000 euros. However, the specialist trade complains about the halving of the subsidy for e-company cars – that could dampen orders.VW remains the market leader ahead of Skoda and BMWAmong the ten most important brands in 2021, which together accounted for 66.2% of all new car registrations, VW remained with a share of 15.0% market leader, followed by Skoda (share: 9.1%), BMW (share: 6.5%) and Seat (share: 6.3%). Compared to the previous year, Audi (+13.1%) and Fiat (+10.2%) recorded growth. Declines were recorded at Renault (-16.8%), Ford (-13.6%), Hyundai (-8.6%), Skoda (-7.6%), VW (-6.0%), Seat ( -4.8%), Mercedes (-3.4%) and BMW (-1.2%) observed.VW Golf slumped by a thirdThe best-selling car in Austria in 2021 was the Fiat 500 with 6477 units, displacing the Skoda Octavia, which had to accept a decline of 22 percent compared to the previous year, in second place (6233 units). In third place was the VW Golf (4816, minus 31 percent). The best-selling electric car was Tesla’s Model 3 (3534) ahead of VW ID.3 and VW ID.4 (2901 and 2487). Tesla delivered 1,147 of the Model Y, although it was only available from the end of August. With 5881 units sold in 2021, the VW brand is the electric car leader. 44,747 new registrations for two-wheelers After a significant increase in new registrations for two-wheelers in 2020 (+13.4%), a decline of 2.9% was observed in 2021. While the number of newly registered motorcycles (32,351) remained largely unchanged compared to the previous year (+0.5%), new registrations of motorized bicycles (12,396) fell by 10.8%.
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