French True Fleet surge compensates for Private decline
In May, 194,000 new cars were registered in France, 1.2% more than the same month last year, figures released by Dataforce show. But that figure hides large disparities between the segments, says Dataforce analyst Gabriel Juhas: “At 17.8%, True Fleets had their highest percentage growth since October 2017”.
That is, if we discount the anomalous results for August 2018, when True Fleet sales suffered a sharp, negative impact from WLTP implementation.
Solid growth
But more recently, French True Fleets have shown solid growth over the last four months.
Special Channels were up 9.9%, with both Rental-car (+8.1%) and Dealership/Manufacturer (+12.2%) racking up the positives. At the other end of the spectrum, the Private Market dropped by 11.3%, its 7th straight month of declining registrations.
Top 10 brands
Looking at the most popular True Fleet brands in France, they were topped – as ever – by the three domestic giants, all of which managed to score wins: Peugeot (+25.9%) took over the first spot from Renault (+1.6%), which clung to second place despite strong gains by Citroën (+74.6%) - the highest in the Top 10.
Next up, in descending order: VW, Mercedes, BMW and Audi, which grew more (+30.4%) than the other three German brands thanks in large part to the Q3, the brand's most registered model in May. Fiat, in 8th place, grew by 51.7% while Toyota, in 9th, increased by 59.3% - thanks to the excellent sales performances of the 500 for Fiat, and the Yaris and RAV4 for Toyota. Ford closed the Top 10.
Fuel types
Taking a look at year-to-date performance for fuel types in True Fleet sales, Dataforce observed a steady decline for diesel, down 10.2% to just over 125,000 registrations, marking the lowest YTD May figures since the bite of the global financial crisis in 2009.
Petrol registrations, on the other hand, have gone up by 63.8%, more than compensating for the slack left by diesel's decline. Alternative fuels (electric and hybrid, mostly) increased by 18.9%.
