Following our Australian report series, we also took a look at the newly acquired data for a country which is about 4,000 kilometres away from the Australian coast: New Zealand. With regards to its volume of 154,000 new car registrations in 2018, it is comparable to the Norwegian passenger car market, which finished slightly below 148,000 registrations. Setting the market into relation to its “neighbouring” country, New Zealand would cover 13.9% of the Australian Total Market.
Total Market development came to a halt
After several years of robust registration growth figures, with 2016 (+ 10.4%) and 2017 (+ 9.1%) being the most outstanding years, this development abated to some extent in 2018. Over the prior year, registrations increased by only 1.2% and considering the current development over the first four months of 2019, the small decline of Total Market registrations in YTD April (- 2.7%) indicates a less dynamic market demand.
However, looking at the market segments in detail for YTD April 2019, it is notable that the Private Market took by far the largest share. 76.6% of new cars were registered by private persons, which is an outstanding value considering that in Europe only Russia has a higher share of the Private Market.
Preference for SUVs and Pick-ups
Like the Australians, the so-called Kiwis also prefer SUVs and Pick-ups when it comes to the different types of vehicle segments. More than two thirds, namely 67.5% of all new car registrations were within those two segments in 2018 coming from a share of 49.1% in 2014. In conclusion, this combined share even rose to 71.3% considering the registrations of the first four months of 2019.
Interestingly, this preference differs when combining vehicle segments with the different market segments. While private customers prefer SUVs (46.5% in YTD April 2019) over Pick-ups (25.7%), this proportion completely turns around when it comes to the True Fleet segment with Pick-ups taking a larger share (42.2%) than SUVs (30.9%).