Germany August new-car sales up 8.3% year on year

LONDON (ICIS)–Germany’s new-car registrations rose 8.3% year on year to 245,076 in August, the country’s federal vehicle authority said in a data release on Friday.

On a sequential comparison with July, August registrations were down 12.1%.

For the first eight months of 2016, registrations were up 5.7% year on year to 2.26m, according to the data by Flensburg-based Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA).

Gasoline cars accounted for 52.6% of August’s registrations, diesel cars for 45.3%, with hybrid and electric cars accounting for the remainder.

Volkswagen remained the market leader with a share of 19.9% of August’s registrations and 20.0% of registrations from January to August, followed by Mercedes with shares of 10.1% and 9.2%, respectively.

In related news on Friday, US August new vehicle sales were reported down 4.1% year on year.

The automotive industry is a major global consumer of petrochemicals which contributes more than a third of the raw material costs of an average vehicle. ICIS tracks the movement of petrochemical raw material costs in auto production both globally and regionally with the weighted ICIS Basket of Automotive Petrochemicals (IBAP).

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