The Italian car market closes 2021 with 1,457,952 cars registered: compared to 2020, the year of the pandemic, the volume of registrations increased by 5.5%. However, compared to 2019, the market suffered a heavy decline of 23.9%, with 460,000 cars lost.
Numbers that make even more controversial “the decision of the institutions to totally ignore incentives for cars and light commercial vehicles in the Budget Law”, underlines Unrae, the association of foreign manufacturers. The aftermath of Covid, the semiconductor crisis but also a policy of fragmented state support weighed on the final balance. “Unrae reiterates its strong bewilderment over the Institutions’ decision not to assign the economic resources necessary to incentivize the car market with a three-year plan in the Budget Law. So far, the scarce resources allocated with “stop and go” interventions have had a positive impact in promoting electric mobility ”, explains president Michele Crisci in an official note.
“The registrations of full-electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid vehicles have, in fact, increased by 274% in the last year and a half, with an undoubted positive impact on the renewal of the fleet and on the reduction of emissions. The absence of an at least medium-term strategy, with an organic intervention plan will make the economic costs of the transition fall on consumers, and the social costs on the workers of a sector that generates a turnover commensurate with 20% of GDP ”, concludes Crisci.
Among users, private individuals closed the year with a 62.5% share, just under 923 thousand units, while self-registrations (ie the cars that the dealers name themselves and then resell as “zero km”) touched 10% with 145,600 cars. The long-term rental closes 2021 with 17.5% of share and 258,870 registrations, the short-term one to 64,400 units; while the companies rise to represent 5.7% of the market with 83,700 registrations.
From the point of view of fuel, petrol and diesel closed the year with a share of 29.7% and 22.6% respectively. LPG rises to 7.3%, while methane stops at 2.1% of the total. Hybrids closing the year at 29%, with “full” hybrids at 6.9% and “mild” at 22.1%. Pure electric cars have a 4.6% share and rechargeable hybrids 4.7%, with a total of 136,854 cars registered.
Coming to 2022, in the absence of state interventions, the Centro Studi Promotor (CSP) forecast is 1.5 million registrations. “If this were the case, in the three-year period 2020-2022, 4,339,708 would be registered in Italy against the minimum level of six million that would be necessary to avoid further decay of our ancient car fleet”, explains CSP.
“The factors that will lead 2022 to reach the absolutely depressed level of registrations mentioned above are the same that determined the disastrous results of 2021, namely: the persistence of the pandemic, the economy in recovery but with many sectors and many people still in difficulty, the microchip crisis, the disorientation of buyers in view of an ecological transition that is announced but which does not take off, the disturbance of dealers due to the decision of many car manufacturers to want to overcome the distribution system based on dealerships ” , concludes CSP.