Following a serious drop of – 17.1% in September the passenger car market in Spain was down by “only” – 6.8% in October and scored 92,000 new registrations. With ‑ 3.2% the registrations on Private households were in slightly better shape than company cars, as the True Fleet volume was down by – 6.5% compared to October 2017. Looking on the year-to-date figures it’s the other way around: the increase of True Fleets is more than double as high as in the Private Market (+ 14.4% vs. + 7.0%). Supported by a strong + 11.8% for registrations on Dealerships/Manufacturer and Short-Term Rental companies the total passenger car market is up by + 9.9% for January-October 2018.
Brand performance
Volkswagen took back the crown from Peugeot who was number one in September. Especially the Polo (VW’s top-seller in fleet for October!) had a very strong month with + 494.3% and led the Small Passenger Car segment for the first time since January 2012. Toyota and BMW on rank number 3 and 4 both made a huge jump. With + 24.0% Toyota gained five positions in the ranking; BMW even jumped from 12th into 4th, thanks to a remarkable + 42.8%. Ranking all BMW models descending by their absolute volume growth in October you find the X1 on pole position followed by X2, X3 and X4. Obviously, the SUV line-up is currently in great demand and represented 58.7% of all fleet registrations of the manufacturer from Bavaria in this month. The performance of the X1 was especially impressive and BMW’s smallest SUV ranked second behind Nissan’s Qashqai in the SUV Compact segment. Talking of Nissan: the Japanese manufacturer, ranked 8th behind Renault, Mercedes and SEAT, was the only brand between 5th and 12th with a plus (+ 7.1%).
A bit further down the ranking two Premium brands showed interesting results. Lexus achieved its highest market share in Spain up to now and Infiniti equalized its best one from December 2013.
Lexus’s No. 1 model, the NX more than doubled its volume over October last year. It ranked 4th in the SUV Medium segment behind Mercedes GLC, Volvo XC60 and Toyota RAV4, thus outperforming a serious amount of very established competitors. Further support came from the Lexus IS which even scored a growth rate of + 217.6%. Regarding Infiniti, the growth came almost completely from the QX30 which achieved a new monthly record in Spain.
Fuel type performance
Our analysis by fuel types led to several premiers: with only 58.2% of all new registered company cars the Diesel share fell below 60% for the first time ever in the Spanish fleet market. The Alternative powertrains were especially able to benefit from this trend and consequently we saw new records for both Full Electric Cars and Bivalent engines (CNG/Petrol and LPG/Petrol) while the Hybrid share (9.3%) was at its second highest.
Wondering about the top models within Alternative powertrains? Renault Zoe led the EV model ranking in October, the Fiat Tipo clearly dominated the group of bivalent cars and the Toyota Prius Plus and the Mitsubishi Outlander were the most preferred Hybrid and Plug-In Hybrid models respectively.