Europe truck sales suffer badly as Covid-19 lockdowns impact new registrations

Commercial vehicle sales slumped across Europe during the month of April as countries implemented lockdown procedures to cope with the spread of Covid-19.

Registration figures from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association showed that across the EU new commercial vehicle sales fell by 67% in April, leaving the number of registrations for the year-to-date at -34.5%.

Worst affected of the 27 EU member states was Spain which saw market activity fall by 87.8%, closely followed by Italy (-85.5%) and France (-82.4%). Unsurprisingly every single country recorded a fall for total commercial vehicles sales, but Finland was least affected with a 27.6% fall.

Sweden, who did not implement stringent lockdown rules still saw a 36.4% decline in registrations, compared to the UK which saw an 84.5% drop in new commercial vehicle registrations.

Throughout Europe it was light commercial vehicle registrations which took the biggest hit, recording a 69.6% drop compared to April 2019. The UK recorded one of the highest drops with an 86.2% fall and it was only Spain (91%) and Italy (89.9%) which fared worse. HGVs over 16-tonnes, however, performed slightly better, with an 80.7% fall in the UK registrations but still significantly higher than totals recorded by Italy (-61.9%) and Spain (48.9%) whose market sales are roughly half that of the UK’s. The worst affected country for HGV registrations were Lithuania with 108 sales - an 87.6% drop – while the lowest recorded number of sales was in Cyprus where just one truck over 16-tonnes was registered, compared to April 2019’s nine registrations (a fall of 88.9%).

It wasn’t all bad news throughout Europe though. Greece managed to record the only positive increase in sales with 45 HGV registrations up from 2019’s sales of 35 new trucks, while in the bus & coach market, Sweden saw the only positive increase with a 43.5% increase due to 99 new registrations.