Published on January 10, 2023

The auto market is on the rebound, but 2022 closes in the red

For the automotive market, 2022 was one of the worst years in the last half-century. The Promoter Study Center, reporting the concluding data, points out that full-year registrations in Italy fell to 1,316,702 units, down 9.7 per cent in 2021 and 31.3 per cent in 2019. The 2022 result is only 0.9 per cent above the 2013 level of 1,304,842 registrations, which had been the worst result since 1978.

The factors behind the crisis are many. The pandemic emergence, and subsequently the war in Ukraine, stalled production and sales, and the ‘chip shortage’ is the most obvious consequence. This has led to considerable delays in producing and delivering new vehicles. The supply of microchips decreased, demand increased, prices jumped, and had a substantial impact on the entire auto supply chain.

It was only in the second half of the year that the trend was turned on by an improvement in supplies of all essential components for automobile construction. There were 104,915 registrations in December, up 21 % from December 2021, but down 25.3 % from the same month in 2019, i.e. the year before the pandemic. December’s is the fifth consecutive monthly growth after a sharply declining first part of 2022, but it does not change the assessment of the entire year, which was catastrophic.

For the second-hand car market, things are also not going very well. In fact, the entire sector (this is Unrae data) is contracting after the first 9 months of 2022, compared with data collected in the same period last year. Going deeper into the analysis, however, we can see an important increase in transfers of ownership between private individuals, which are becoming increasingly relevant, reaching a share of nearly 60% of the total. And that continues to prefer exchanges between models with many years on their shoulders.

An increasingly older vehicle fleet that therefore needs a technological upgrade to achieve sufficient levels of safety. This is taken care of by Viasat’s services and devices that guarantee in the aftermarket, even for ‘older’ cars and their owners, maximum protection, assistance, and safety thanks to 24/7 Operations Centers.  

 

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