Car sales in the Basque Country started the year strong, up almost 20%.

Thus, 1,938 new cars and SUVs were sold in the Basque Country in January, representing an increase of 19.6% compared to the same month the previous year, according to data released yesterday by industry employers’ association Anfac (manufacturers). ), Faconauto (dealers) and Ganvam (distributors). This growth is almost three times that of Spain as a whole, where 68,685 apartments were registered, up 7.3% from January 2023, and makes Euskadi the second autonomous community with the highest sales growth, second only to by 23.1%, which was observed in La Rioja registered.

The upward trend in January was continued by the purchase of cars with internal combustion engines, alternatives to internal combustion engines. In this sense, 55.8% (1082 units) of cars sold in Euskadi last month were electric (pure or not), hybrids (plug-in or not), hydrogen or other gases. On the other hand, petrol engines, which continue to decline little by little, accounted for only 36% of those sold (698 units), and diesel engines are starting to be marginal, as only 158 units were sold, 8.1% of all enrolled. in the first month of this year in the Basque Country.

The same trend was recorded in Spain as a whole: cars with alternative engines accounted for 54.1% (37,166 units) of total sales. Of all cars registered in January, 34.9% (23,966) were with a gasoline engine, and only 11% (7,553 cars) were with a diesel engine.

Promotion of rental companies

Despite the strong sales figures to start the year, which continue the positive trend of recent months, industry employers’ associations note that January’s boom nationally was driven by the “impulse” given by purchases of rental companies, as sales to both individuals and companies “hold records similar to those of a year ago.” They also remember that they are still 20.5% below January 2020 levels, just before the pandemic hit.

In this regard, it should be noted that in 2019, the last year before Covid, 1.26 million cars were sold in Spain, while in 2023 the number of registrations remained close to 950 thousand. In Euskadi, almost 40,000 cars were sold in the year before the pandemic, while last year there were still only 24,400, down 38% from 2019.

At the moment, industry associations for the current 2024 are looking at sales volumes that could be around a million units.