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Best Prospects for U.S. Exports
Aftermarket Summary
The aftermarket in Sweden is a stable market with 1-2 percent annual growth. It is not considered to be directly affected by the sales of new cars (that peaked last year) since the cars have a larger effect on the aftermarket after 4-5 years when its parts need to be repaired or replaced.
In fact, even though sales of new cars peaked in 2017, so did used ones with an all-time high of 1,179,904 sold cars. This was an 0.1% increase from 2016. Of the total amount, petrol cars were leading the category with 784,098 sold cars, and secondly diesel cars with 335,099 sold cars. The other larger categories with were hybrid solutions with petrol, of which the largest segment was petrol and electric hybrids. Petrol/electric hybrids totaled in 11,680 sold cars which was an increase with 32% from 2016. The largest increase was seen in 694 sold electric cars which was +90.7% from 2016 when 364 were sold. However, the high increase in percentages, electric cars are still quite few on the aftermarket and petrol/diesel cars still dominates this segment.
The new tax rules, the bonus-malus model as mention earlier, introduced in July 2018 are also estimated to impact the aftermarket as it is less attractive to buy new petrol and diesel cars. Therefore, more people choose to buy a used one instead. Diesel cars on the aftermarket increased in sales and accounts for 31% of all sold cars in the third quarter of 2018. Electric cars and hybrids only keeps a 2% share of sales on the aftermarket.
Electric Vehicles Market
This segment holds the most opportunities in the Swedish market and is also the most growing segment in Swedish export of used cars. The three clearest trends in Sweden of vehicles are electrification, automatization and digitalization. Prognoses for new registrations of passenger cars by fuel, predict a decrease of diesel cars and significant increases of electric, electric hybrids, plug in hybrid cars during 2018-2021. Also looking at the overall prognose for passenger cars in use by fuel, it shows that the amount of petrol and diesel cars will not drastically change, but that the amount of electric, electric hybrids and plug-in hybrids in use will significantly increase during 2018-2021. The number of electric cars in use are estimated to rise from 11,000 in 2017 to almost 55,000 by 2021. Corresponding estimates on the number of electric hybrids in use is believed to rise from approximately 71,500 in 2017 to almost 185,000 by 2021. Also, plug-in hybrids are estimated to increase from roughly 32,000 in 2017 to 160,000 by 2021.
Those buying new vehicles in this segment can get a bonus funded by the Swedish government as an encouragement to buy low emission cars. Swedish people will have more ambitions to buy electric cars in the future. This bonus model is valid through January 1, 2021. The requirements for this is that the vehicles emissions are no greater that 60grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer or can be driven with an alternative fuel and also that the car has not been in use before. The bonus is calculated based on a few different parameters with different conditions for individuals and companies. However, the bonus can be 25% of the car’s retail price at a maximum. For electric cars and zero/emission hydrogens the highest possible bonus is 60,000 SEK (approximately 6,600 USD).
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