The Swiss car market loses ground as the 3rd quarter comes to a close

Swiss passenger car market in September 2020

In September, registrations in the Swiss passenger car market were again below the previous year’s level. Registrations in the private market fell by 6.1%, while commercial registrations fell by 18.9% compared with the same month last year. Overall, the registration volume was thus 12.4% lower than in September 2019.

The commercial retail channels also, once again, faced double-digit percentage losses and with almost 4,500 registrations, the True Fleet Market was down 15.6%. However, the registrations of Dealer/Importer and car rental companies were hit harder, falling by 20.1% and even 31.5% over last September.

True Fleet Market: Growth in the Espace Mittelland region, demand for electric vehicles

Contrary to the negative trend within most areas of Switzerland, fleet registrations in the greater Espace Mittelland region increased (+ 1.1%). This was based on the positive development of the fleet business in the Cantons of Berne (+ 10.6%) and Fribourg (+ 6.9%).

Within the top 15 importer brands, Peugeot (+ 69.9%), Mercedes (+ 31.1%) and Tesla (+ 23.1%) achieved the greatest growth in the Swiss fleet business. The Tesla Model 3 (+ 37.2%) was not only the most widely registered electric fleet vehicle overall, but also the second most frequently registered fleet vehicle in September after the long-running Skoda Octavia (- 45.7%). The growing interest in electric vehicles among Swiss fleet operators was widely visible (+ 52.7%). The growing model diversity was further enhanced in September by the addition of Volkswagen’s ID.3 model, which immediately jumped to second place ahead of the Renault Zoe in terms of volume.

Market development of light commercial vehicles up to 3.5t

The Swiss market for light commercial vehicles, up to 3.5 tons, declined by 5.5% in September. As in the previous month, the private market again developed extremely positively with growth of 18.1%, but this was not enough to fully offset the decline in commercial registrations (- 9.7%).

Within the commercial detail channels, company registrations in the True Fleet Market still declined slightly (- 3.4%). Larger losses were observed within the tactical channels. The registrations of Dealer/Importer fell by 36.1% and the registrations of car rental companies by 12.3% compared to the same month last year.

Among the top 10 importer brands, only Opel (+ 44.6%) and Volkswagen (+ 33.9%) were able to increase their registrations in the True Fleet Market. At model level, three models – the Ford Transit (+ 288.2 %), the VW Caddy (+ 147.8 %) and the Opel Vivaro (+ 125.0 %) – more than doubled their registrations compared to the same month last year.