Market: Please open the showrooms quickly!
BITTER, BITTER The closed showrooms have given the car market in Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein a disappointing January result. Just 15,130 new passenger cars hit the road. That is another 3658 or 19.5 percent less than in the already below-average month of the previous year. auto-schweiz is therefore pushing for the sales areas for new cars to be opened as soon as possible [...]
This is another 3658 or 19.5 percent less than in the already below-average month of the previous year. auto-schweiz is therefore pressing for the sales areas for new cars to be opened up as quickly as possible and has already made representations to the Federal Council in this regard.
Experience with test drives and handovers
Media spokesman Christoph Wolnik: "Together with the Auto-Gewerbe Verband Schweiz AGVS and the Schweizerischen Gewerbeverband sgv, we have asked the Federal Council to allow us to go about our business again in the showrooms. The automotive industry has learned and shown, at the latest in the first wave of the pandemic, how contactless test drives and handovers work. It must be possible to show a car to a maximum of five people and have a short sales talk."
Problems with the online processing of a purchase
Many customers apparently still shy away from buying a car purely online. When making a purchase such as a car, the vast majority still want to sit in a test drive and ask the sales staff questions. This is particularly true for fleet managers, whose orders accounted for around half of the market for new passenger cars.
One in seven new cars with electrified drive systems
For the current year, auto-schweiz expects 270,000 new registrations, which would represent an increase of 14 percent over the previous year. The prerequisite for this is a limitation of the negative economic effects of the Covid 19 pandemic.
In terms of engine types, January saw a nearly 50 percent increase in registrations of passenger cars without pure combustion engines. At 35.4 percent, the market share of hybrid, electric, gas and hydrogen cars was also higher than the figure for 2020 as a whole of 28.2 percent.
In January, more than one in seven new cars had an electrified powertrain: the proportion of plug-in hybrids, fuel cell vehicles and purely electric models was 14.4 percent, the same as in 2020 as a whole.
