Austrian Car Sales slows down in 2024. Monthly sales dropped by 9.1%, reporting 16,492 new car registrations. YTD figures at 163,633 were up 4.7% compared to the prior year.
Market Trend and Outlook
Following recession in 2023, GDP is expected to grow by 0.3% in 2024. Private consumption is projected to pick up from last years’ slump on the back of real wage increases at the beginning of the year following collective bargaining agreements. The high interest rate environment is impacting the construction sector, especially weighing on the construction of single-family homes. The weakness of Austria’s main trading partners, persistently high energy costs and increasing unit labour costs constitute a drag on industrial production. This is reflected in weak growth of goods exports.
However, towards the end of 2024 and more so in 2025, the pressures weighing on investment and exports are expected to fade with interest rates and energy prices projected to decline and external demand set to recover. The recently adopted construction package is expected to support the stabilisation of the construction sector. In 2025, GDP growth is forecast to increase to 1.6%.
Reflecting the stagnant economic growth, the Austrian auto market in August 2024 decreased by 9.1%, reporting 16,492 new car registrations. YTD figures at 163,633 were up 4.7% compared to the previous year.
Looking at cumulative data up to August 2024 brand-wise, Volkswagen secured 1st position with 21,178 sales (+9.7%), followed by Skoda in 2nd at 16,274 (1.1%) and BMW in 3rd with 12,546 new sales (+8.8%).
In 4th position ranked Audi with 10,580 sales (-3.8%), followed by Seat with 9,306 (+3.1%), Toyota -up 1 spot- with 7,647 (+13.9%), and Dacia -up 2 spots- at 7,563 new registrations (+22.1%).
Mercedes -down 2 spots- ranked in 8th position with 7,525 sales (-8.2%), followed by Hyundai -up 2 spots- in 9th with 5,738 sales (-5.7%) and Tesla -up 2 spots- closing the leaderboard with 5,085 sales (-17.2%).
Looking at specific models the Volkswagen Golf became the best seller rising 100.9% in year-on-year volume and 2 spots, followed by the Skoda Octavia, up 4%.
Medium-Term Market Trend
The Austrian car market in the last decade hasn’t performed amazingly, reaching the all time high back in 2011. In the following year began a 3 year downtrend that would take sales form the peak of 376,628 to a low of 302,808 in 2014. The trend was reversed in 2015 but the 3 year growth that would follow couldn’t bring sales back above the all time high. In fact by the year 2018 sales started to drop again taking new car registrations back down to 310,896 by the end of 2019.
The arrival of the pandemic brought the European markets to a halt, due to the restrictive policies imposed by Governments all over Europe. Subsequently the Austrian car market fell 21.3% to the lowest level of the decade at 244,532.
In 2021, as for nearly all European countries, was a year of recovery and in the case of Austria sales remained quite stable, rising only 0.7%. In 2022 the market broke the resistance and fell 10.3% to 215,049 cumulative sales. A combination of factors are behind the current industry struggle: the disruption in the global supply chain caused by a lack of raw materials, in particular for the production of microchips and Governments push towards Evs, an expensive alternative for low income consumers.
In 2023 the Austrian Auto Market registered 239,106 units, growing 11.2% from previous year.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group and top 10 models.
