Economic and Market Report: state of the EU auto industry – First three quarters of 2020

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Key takeaways

EU economic outlook

• The COVID‐19 pandemic and related containment measures have plunged the European economy into its deepest recession since World War II.
• EU GDP is forecast to contract by 7.4% in 2020, before recovering by 4.1% in 2021.
• The EU unemployment rate is set to increase from 7.7% in 2020 to 8.6% next year.

Passenger car registrations

• Over the first nine months of 2020, EU demand for cars contracted by 28.8%.
• In the United States, passenger car sales went down 21.1% at 8 million units.
• Japanese car sales in the first nine months contracted by 18.1%.
• Car registrations in China are now down 13.2% to 13 million units.

Passenger car production

• So far this year, passenger car output in Europe fell by 29.2% to under 10 million units.
• US car production slipped by 27% to 4.1 million units over the first three quarters of 2020.
• Brazil saw a marked decline of 39% as a result of the disruptions caused by COVID‐19.
• Some 11.7 million cars were produced in China between January to September, down 19.1%.

Exports and imports of passenger cars

• From January to August 2020, the EU exported €70 billion worth of passenger cars, which was more than €23 billion lower than a year ago.
• The total export volume of EU-made cars saw a year‐to‐date drop of 27.7%.
• With a 20% share, the United States was the leading source of EU imports (by value) in 2020 to date, three percentage points ahead of the United Kingdom (down 40.6% so far).

Commercial vehicle registrations

• Nine months into the year, the EU market for new commercial vehicles had contracted by 24.5%, totalling 1,206,259 units registered.
• Registrations of vans in the EU fell by 22.8% to 1 million units from January to September.
• A total of 175,857 new trucks were registered so far this year, or 32.6% fewer than in 2019.

Commercial vehicle production

• Commercial vehicle output on the European continent is expected to decrease during 2020 by 24% to reach 2.7 million units.
• In North America, full-year 2020 production will decline 27.5% to 3.4 million units.
• China’s commercial vehicle output is expected to decline by 8.6% to 4.8 million units.
• Japanese and South Korean production is forecast to reach 1.2 million units, down 18.5%.

Exports and imports of commercial vehicles

• Between January and August 2020, both imports and exports of commercial vehicles fell significantly (34.0% and 30.5% respectively).
• Nevertheless, commercial vehicles provided the EU with a trade surplus of approximately €4 billion so far this year, although this was €1.5 billion less than in 2019.

Should you have any additional questions about this Economic and Market Report, please contact the ACEA Statistics department.