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Consumers’ appetite for the
industry’s latest fuel-sipping diesels is still spiralling, setting yet another
all time West European sales share record during an otherwise disappointing car
sales year.
AID’s
exclusively compiled figures for last year show that the region’s diesel sales
penetration ballooned to a highest-ever 55.8 per cent, thus beating the year
earlier levels by 4 percentage points.
By any measure, when judged from latest full-year car sales figures, the
performance of West Europe’s trendbucking diesel car segment retains all the
familiar hallmarks of a growing segment.
Foremost among them, the strapping good health and underlying upward direction
of Europe’s diesel car market is perhaps best illustrated by the striking
contrasts in last year’s fortunes of petrol and diesel-fuelled cars.
In a year marked above all by a renewed slowing in underlying overall new car
demand, thanks to the biting ill-effects of Europe’s second-half sovereign debt
crisis, demand for diesels has so far remained largely unaffected.
55.8%
European diesel car sales penetration in
2011
That’s born out by both annual
and quarterly sales data.
Whilst last year’s sales of petrol-powered cars felt the full brunt of the
renewed downturn, falling by close on ten per cent during the year, diesels
bucked the poor trend with a contrasting 6.1 per cent rise in sales.
Final tally for 2011 car sales in Western Europe: Diesels, 7.1 million; Petrol,
5.7 million, according to AID’s exclusively compiled car sales numbers.
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