There is a need to push European legislators to stop penalising drivers for buying and driving diesel and even petrol vehicles and start rewarding drivers for using electric vehicles and hybrids instead. The carrot and stick approach to changing people ' s minds seems to be all about the stick now with Norway being the only acceptance and this may explain why it is in the top 5 global EV markets by volume and the highest EV market per capita with 21.5 plug-in Electric Vehicles“ PEVs” per thousand people!
Political and media spin destroying The growth in total new car sales across Europe slowed down in 2016 and with some regional the diesel market variations we think this will be the picture for the EU28 and EFTA3 over the next three years with
A collapse in diesel used values could sales growing by 4.8 % in 2017, 4.4 % in 2018 and 1.2 % in 2019 before then going into reverse partly spark another financial crisis as a result of the usual automotive economic cycle.
Commercial Vehicles sales are benefiting from the growth in the construction and industrial sectors in many European countries, particularly for LCVs which make up the bulk of sales in the commercial vehicle segment. We therefore we expect sales to continue to grow across the EU28 and EFTA 3 ending the year with LCV sales up around 11 % with a similar growth potential in 2018.
Residual Values
As anticipated we are now seeing the plateauing of RVs in most countries and whilst the UK saw an upturn in RVs in Q1 some of this was typical seasonal improvements with the rest being due to a correction to the very negative stance taken immediately after the Brexit vote. Now that the economic disaster predicted by many has failed to yet materialise RV setters are feeling a little more optimistic about the future.
Whist the political backlash from populist voting has failed to delivery any election surprises so far this year, politics continues to have a heavy influence on values. The war on diesel has already seen used values drop by 9 % in April 2017 in France according to Autoscout24 whilst values in the US have dropped by over 20 %. A lack of a clear message from both the politicians and the industry bodies is doing nothing to help the latest and very clean diesel engine vehicles gain traction amongst new or used car buyers. The end result of this is that if you are an OEM selling 800,000 diesels a year or more you are looking at € 1-2 billion being wiped off their second-hand values and with many leasing companies sitting on fleets where diesel is 75 % or more of their portfolio we could be looking at a financial crisis to mirror the banking crisis.
European Automotive Report- 2017 Quarter 1 28