Corona and the shortage of semiconductors are shaking up the car trade around the world. Because the delivery times for new cars are now extremely long, car buyers are switching to used ones. This phenomenon becomes visible on the used car spaces, where in some cases there is only a car on every second parking space. And also on the Internet, where the selection has been noticeably thinned out.
Supply has shrunk
“The offer has shrunk by a third,” says Robert Madas from Eurotax Austria. The service provider, which is represented in 20 European countries as well as Australia, uses a complicated method to calculate the current used car prices. For 150,000 items of equipment and. Engine variants or the different years of construction.
Complicated calculation
The basic data for this are provided by large internet platforms such as Autoscout and Willhaben on the one hand, and car dealers on the other. “About a third of Austrian dealers transmit the prices actually achieved to us,” says Madas. These are then compared with the internet data and checked against by a Eurotax analysis team. Only then will Eurotax publish the exact prices for used models.
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Development of the residual value for used cars
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Because supply has shrunk and demand has stayed the same, prices are rising. Used cars are currently achieving an average of 7.5 percent higher sales revenue than in February 2020, the last month before the first lockdown. For comparison: In Germany the price level is 9.1 percent, in Switzerland 6.7 percent above February of the previous year.
Commercial vehicles: +17 percent
In the case of light commercial vehicles (LCV), the increase is even more drastic, in this category the residual value climbed by 17 percent. According to Madas, this is also related to the introduction of the NoVA. Since July 1, 2021, the state has been collecting the standard consumption tax for light commercial vehicles for the first time.
It is noticeable that the diesel models increased by 8.8 percent and the gasoline models by 8.0 percent. In contrast, prices for electrified vehicles stagnated. Plug-in hybrids currently cost 1.4 percent more than a year and a half ago, while hybrid cars recorded an increase of 0.4 percent.
The used car prices for pure electric vehicles, however, fell by 4.8 percent. The latter is due to the still young technology, which quickly becomes obsolete, according to Robert Madas.
In any case, the trend is clear: the price level for used vehicles will continue to rise because the demand for new vehicles cannot be satisfied even in the short and medium term.
The curve will flatten out in 2023
“For 2022 we expect a slight increase, in 2023 the residual values should then stagnate,” says the Eurotax employee. Postscript: “But only if new registrations rise again.”
Source: Nachrichten
