Automotive industry: market for new cars: fewer offers, fewer discounts

Due to the semiconductor crisis, new cars are slowly becoming a scarce commodity on the German car market. As a result, prices rise or the otherwise usual discounts fall, as the Duisburg CAR Institute reports for the month of August. In the first half of the year, the falling production was cushioned with the help of stock levels at dealers and importers, explains study leader Ferdinand Dudenhöffer in the study published on Saturday.

“The discounts in the car market continue to decline, the number of offers is getting smaller and the delivery times are longer,” says the institute, naming the main trends in purchase offers and car subscriptions. Manufacturers and dealers are also very reluctant to give their own registrations, which are usually brought onto the market at higher price discounts. Only 24.1 percent of all new registrations and thus 1.9 percentage points less than in the previous month are due to their account.

This has consequences for the average new car price, which rose by 0.5 percent for an index average car in August. According to the market researchers, customers can currently expect an average discount of 27.3 percent from the list price for short registrations, while the discount for self-configured cars from Internet providers is only 18.8 percent.

The range of limited-term car subscriptions, including maintenance and insurance services, is also becoming scarcer. In particular, gasoline and battery-electric vehicles were offered less often, while the supply of diesel and hybrid cars increased slightly. Interested parties had to wait an average of 12.5 weeks for their subscribed car in August – around two weeks longer than in March.