The microchip crisis and the consequent lack of new vehicles, the weakening of demand for an economic recovery that the war in Ukraine has put on hold and thrown families – and the economy in general – into uncertainty in a moment of rising prices and skyrocketing fuel costs, together with consumer doubts about what technology to choose for the engine in a context of decarbonisation, mix a cocktail that reflects in car sales that consumers do not see that it is the best time to buy a new vehicle. Not in vain, until May, the drop in registrations in Castilla y León is “alarming”, the president of the employers’ association of dealers, Faconauto, Gerardo Pérez, warned yesterday at a conference held in Valladolid.
They have collapsed 23 percent, well above the average of 11 for the whole of Spain.
“The consumer is afraid,” acknowledged Pérez who, although he stressed that Castilla y León is one of the communities that has best exhausted the funds of the Move Plan, called on the Board to start up aid to improve the acquisition of combustion vehicles such as other communities have been established. “More in a territory with so much weight in the sector” and that will be necessary to be able to maintain sales and employment. Employment in the dealership sector, in which about 5,000 people work in Castilla y León, has been maintained for the moment, but if it continues like this “it will be difficult” and “irremediably” it will have to be “destroyed”, warned the President of Faconauto.
The forecasts are not encouraging. Although the fall in registrations, revised “downward” given the context and the behavior of sales “worse than expected”, will mitigate somewhat at the end of the year, it will still be far from pre-pandemic levels. Thus, according to Faconauto, sales will remain at around 21,600 at the end of the year, 5% less than in 2021, but 60% below the more than 35,000 vehicles sold in 2019. And the trend will continue until at least 2023, although with a slight improvement, when it is expected that 24,500 units will be sold in Castilla y León.
Low-emission zones in cities are also a brake on sales, they warned from the sector, which appeals to “good sense” when setting deadlines. In Spain, warned the president of Faconauto, there are 26 million combustion vehicles, which are to be withdrawn from circulation by 2050, which would mean having to sell one million electric cars a year, when at the moment about 22,000, making it an “impossible to meet” target. There is also a lack of charging points: there are 19,000 in Spain and 350 in Castilla y León, when 15,000 and 350,000 are needed, respectively.
