The UK True Fleet continues to suffer negative growth in 2017

While the rest of the EU-5 has swung back into positive growth for May the UK is still dealing with negative growth, perhaps fuelled in part by consumers with eyes on June’s snap election. The Total Market managed a little over 186,000 registrations in May but this was down 8.5% over last year. True Fleet struggled with a negative 4.5% but it was definitely the Private Market with -14.1% that was worse affected, with a 5-digit drop over May 2016.

True Fleet manufacturers welcomed three new entries into this month’s Top-10 with some outstanding growth from Asian brands. Ford and Opel (2^nd place) once again performed their sporadic dance routine, pirouetting around each other with Ford taking top spot and the highest growth rate inside the Top-5 of + 9.8%, almost solely driven by the Fiesta model performance. German brands took the next three spots, VW (3^rd place), Mercedes (4^th place) and Audi (5^thplace) followed by Nissan (6^th place) keeping BMW (7^th place) from joining its home-grown rivals. Notably all these brands retained their places from last year rankings.

It was however the sibling rivalry of Hyundai (8^th place) and Kia (9^th place) that scored highest in the monthly growth charts. Hyundai managed + 48.0% and Kia + 14.3% moving them into the Top 10 from 13^th and 12^th respectively. Highest volume for the OEM’s was achieved from the sister SUV’s, Hyundai with the Tucson and Kia with the Sportage but worthy mention should be made of the Kia Optima which managed an exceptional 350% growth.

The Alternative Fuel segment in True Fleet had a prosperous month with an increase of 33.1% taking its year-to-date growth to 14.8%. In the Electric Top-5 models the BMW I3 took out 1^st position followed by the Nissan Leaf but it was the Tesla Model X taking 3^rd spot from the Model S (4^th place) for the second month in a row and the Hyundai Ioniq in 5^th spot which impressed most, with both of these vehicle’s not even on the market last June.