Germany car sales up 10.5% in January

LONDON (ICIS)–Germany’s new-car registrations rose 10.5% year on year to 241,399 in January, but they were down 5.9% sequentially from December, the country’s federal vehicle authority said in a data release made available on Friday.

Volkswagen, with sales up 5.1% year on year to 49,535, remained the market leader with a share of 20.5% of total registrations in January, according to the data provided by Flensburg-based Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA).

Mercedes, which came in second with a share of 10.1% or 24,473 cars, saw its January sales jump 20.1% year on year.

Gasoline cars accounted for 52.2% of January’s registrations, diesel cars for 45.1%, with electric, hybrid and natural gas vehicles accounting for the remainder. Registration for electric vehicles nearly tripled year on year, but with 1,323 their market share was only 0.5%, KBA said.

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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