Market: 2024 starts with weakening sales

The evaluations by auto-schweiz are based on federal surveys.

This means that the Swiss car market is lagging behind after the first quarter. Alternative drive systems now account for almost 60 percent of the market, but electric cars and plug-in hybrids are still struggling and are only growing imperceptibly. In the first three months of the year, 57,224 new cars hit the roads of Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein, which is 1,595 or 2.7 percent fewer than in the previous year.

Of these, 33,441 or 58.4 percent had a hybrid, electric, gas or hydrogen drive. The market share of alternative drives has grown by 4.4 percentage points within a year. In particular, hybrid engines without an external charging option made gains. They now account for 30.9 percent of all new cars.

Plug-in hybrids on the rise

At 10,424 units, battery electric models are slightly above the previous year's figure and have a market share of 18.2 percent, 0.8 percentage points more than a year ago. Plug-in hybrids made slightly stronger gains. After three months, their market share stands at 9.3 percent.

Christoph Wolnik, Deputy Director of auto-schweiz: "Although the shortfall compared to the previous year after three months is regrettable, it is not particularly large at just under 1600 vehicles. It corresponds to the average new registrations of one to two working days. It will be easy to catch up over the rest of the year."

Just about getting around the bend

Meanwhile, the National Council and the Council of States have approved the future CO₂-law, which is to apply from 2025, was adopted on the last day of the spring session. The law narrowly made the final cut as the pragmatic stance of the Council of States prevailed in the agreement conference. The measures set out in the CO₂-The average target values for new passenger cars and vans as well as heavy commercial vehicles contained in the new law are now largely in line with European requirements.

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