Volkswagen is still the market leader for new cars in Luxembourg, with BMW in second place and Audi completing the top three.  (Photo: Jan Hanrion/Maison Moderne)

Volkswagen is still the market leader for new cars in Luxembourg, with BMW in second place and Audi completing the top three.  (Photo: Jan Hanrion/Maison Moderne)

With 4,471 new registrations in June, the Luxembourg car market is still below pre-crisis levels. But the proportion of electric  vehicles continues to rise.

Compared to June 2020, new car registrations last month were down by 3.8% with 4,471 units, compared to 4,648 units a year ago. Before the pandemic, in June 2019, some 5,199 new car sales were registered. You have to go back to 2014 to find a worse June (4,416 new registrations).

Since the beginning of the year, 25,287 new registrations have been recorded by the Société nationale de circulation automobile (SNCA). That shows what could be considered an optimistic growth of 21.6% compared to last year over the same period. But 2020 was a sales year truncated by several weeks of closure and confinement.

On the other hand, the first half of the year shows a decline of 18.8% on the new car market compared to 2019, when there were  31,123 new registrations.

Volkswagen and BMW in good shape

According to the latest figures from SNCA and Statec, Volkswagen continues to lead in new registrations with 576 units in June. BMW, which recently , performed well last month with 528 new registrations. Audi completes the podium with 454 new registrations.

Behind them, the gap has widened as Peugeot is in fourth place with just 248 new registrations.

For the first half of the year, the ranking is the same with Volkswagen (3,117 new registrations), BMW (2,681 new registrations) and Audi (2,125 new registrations).

Diesel still in decline

In terms of engines, diesel continues to decline in favour of hybrids and electric cars--of the 4,471 new registrations last month, 22.37% were diesel vehicles. A year ago, diesel accounted for 38.40% of new registrations and as much as 40.97% in June 2019.

The trend is quite different for petrol engines, as their share of new registrations has been increasing since last March, accounting for 41.58% of new registrations in June.

As for electric cars, hybrid engines remain stable with 25.99% of new registrations in June. With 446 new 100% electric registrations, "clean" vehicles represent 9.98% of the monthly total.