AEB expects car market to grow to 1 million units

The Association of European Businesses (AEB) expects the market for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles to grow to 1 million units by the end of the year. This is almost 1.5 times more than in 2022. AEB has updated the forecast, changing the data for calculating the market dynamics. At the same time, in fact, the association simply began to cite the data of the joint venture “Avtostat” and “Electronic Passport”.

In 2023, the market for new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles (LCV) will grow by 45.6%, to 1 million vehicles, according to an updated AEB forecast. January the association’s forecast assumed sales growth of only 12%, up to 770 thousand cars, but now they have changed the approach to collecting statistics.

Traditionally, the Association of European Businesses collected data from official car distributors, who, in turn, received sales data from their own dealers. Since the spring of 2022, against the backdrop of hostilities, foreign brands, with the exception of Chinese ones, have suspended deliveries and production in the Russian Federation, and AEB sales reflected only sold-out warehouses, which were almost exhausted by the beginning of 2023.

Now AEB has supplemented the sales report with data provided by PPK JSC (a joint venture between Avtostat and Electronic Passport JSC). The latter also include the supply of cars to the country, bypassing official importers – the so-called parallel imports.

The AEB says that this approach “will allow us to give a more objective assessment of the state of the new car sales market and its dynamics.”

The difference between the AEB and APC data is noticeable. Thus, according to the AEB, sales of passenger cars and LCVs in the first half of the year fell by 3.1%, to 358.9 thousand units. Whereas for the PPK, they increased by 9.9%, to 428.3 thousand units. Monthly AEB data is 1.7 times less, 52.3 thousand and 87.4 thousand pieces, respectively. At the same time, Chery and its sub-brands are excluded from the AEB monthly statistics, which takes second place in the top of the best-selling brands. In addition, the Geely concern, which is in the top 5 of the passenger car market over the past month, did not provide data to the association. At the same time, these brands are taken into account in sales by PPC.

Olga Nikitina