Market: Light at the end of the tunnel at last
SALES With 25,184 registrations, the market for passenger cars in Switzerland and Liechtenstein grew by 15.9 percent compared to the same month last year. Since the beginning of the year, 58,819 new cars have been registered.
Thanks to Switzerland's purchasing power, the majority of new cars are equipped with alternative drive systems. Now the industry can work off many of last year's backlogged orders and provide customers with their new cars in the spring.
Christoph Wolnik, media spokesman for autoschweiz: "The Swiss vehicle market seems to have largely overcome the chip crisis and further supply restrictions. The year can happily continue like this." Finally, a light at the end of the tunnel.
Clear growth in alternatives
Since the beginning of the year, their market share has been a record 54 percent, of which 27.6 percent is accounted for by full and mild hybrids. With 10,250 registrations and a market share of 17.4 percent, electric cars account for more than one-sixth of the market. The 5205 new plug-in hybrids account for 8.8 percent of the market. Together with models that run on gas or hydrogen, the number of alternative drive systems after three months is 31,736, 16.6 percent up on the previous year. Gasoline engines (36.6 percent) and compression-ignition engines (9.5 percent) are both losing market share slightly.
Good business with heavy trucks
The commercial vehicle figures also point to an end to the supply difficulties. The number of new light commercial vehicles rose by 6.6 percent to 7077 units in the first quarter. In the case of heavy trucks, there was even an increase of 35.2 percent to 1068 vehicles as of the end of March. Only in the case of motorhomes does the boom that began with the pandemic seem to be over. Since the beginning of the year, only 1,777 new registrations have been recorded in this category - a drop of 15.2 percent compared with the previous year.
