Car Sales

Electric-car sales jump to record 54% market share in Norway in 2020 but Tesla loses top spot

By Michael J. Moody 3 months ago

Electric-car sales jumped to a record 54% of all new-vehicle sales in Norway last year, but Tesla’s Model 3 lost its place as the country’s bestselling vehicle despite a late surge.

It is the first time a country has recorded more sales of electric cars than those powered by petrol, diesel and hybrid engines over an entire year.

The Norwegian government plans to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2025, and has used incentives and tax breaks in recent years to encourage an electric-car boom.

Battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) made up 54.3% of new passenger-car sales in 2020, up from 42% in 2019, according to figures published by the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) on Tuesday.

December was a bumper month for car sales in the Nordic country — the best on record — as more than 20,000 new vehicles were registered. Of these, 66.7% were electric vehicles

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China’s Car Sales Fell 6.8% in 2020, but That Still Likely Beats Other Markets

By Michael J. Moody 3 months ago

SHANGHAI—Chinese car sales declined 6.8% last year, as the world’s largest market for automobiles shrank for a third straight year.

Yet the single-digit drop counted as a success in the context of 2020, industry analysts said, with the coronavirus pandemic taking an even heavier toll on other markets. Global car sales are estimated to have fallen 15% last year, according to research firm

IHS Markit,

while U.S. sales are also expected to have dropped about 15%.

“In Q1 we projected much, much worse,” said

Lin Huaibin,

an auto analyst at IHS Markit, after sales in China slumped 41% in the March quarter, during which parts of the country were in lockdown.

Auto makers in China sold 19.29 million passenger vehicles last year, the China Passenger Car Association said Monday, down roughly a fifth on 2017, the market’s peak.

“This year will see a much stronger growth,” said

Cui Dongshu,

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Car sales expected to ramp up significantly in 2021 following bust amid coronavirus

By Michael J. Moody 3 months ago
Car lot

Car sales are on the upswing.


Alan Schein Photography/Getty Images
For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the WHO website.

Last year was not a great year for automakers. Production halted and sales plummeted. And although the pandemic continues to rage amid vaccines rolling out, a new forecast shows brighter days in 2021 for carmakers. TrueCar released its 2021 forecast on Thursday and the firm’s analysts believe we’ll see 16 million cars sold this year.

The figure includes both retail and fleet sales for the total number, and it marks a substantial uptick from 2020 numbers. Last year, new cars sales dropped significantly, with a total of 14.6 million cars sold. To put that into perspective, it was the worst year for carmakers since 2012, when Americans scooped up 14.4 million new cars in the shadows of the Great Recession. Throughout the

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COVID-19: New car sales lowest for nearly three decades as lockdowns crush demand | Business News

By Michael J. Moody 3 months ago

New car sales fell to their lowest level in nearly three decades last year as coronavirus lockdowns crushed demand, according to industry figures.

Just 1.63 million vehicles were registered in 2020, the fewest since 1992, data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) showed.

It was a 29% fall compared to the previous year – the biggest annual slump since 1943, a time when British industry was repurposed for the war effort.

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Can businesses survive another lockdown?

That represented a loss of £20.4bn in turnover.

The car sector was particularly badly hit in April, the first full month of national lockdown, when sales fell by 97%.

Showrooms gradually reopened in June.

SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes said: “We lost nearly three quarters of a million units over three or four months, which we never got back.”

Dealerships

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