INDICATA Market Watch: Online B2C used BEV sales rocket in a year and flying off forecourts

Online B2C used BEV sales rocket in a year and flying off forecourts

Online B2C used car sales in April fell 7.3% year-on-year and were 2.2% lower than in the previous month. This means with a third of the year behind us total online B2C sales are currently 2.2% lower than for April 2021 YTD and 2.4% behind the same period in the pre-Covid 2019.

Sales of used BEVs were 24% lower in April than in the previous month but this is partly due to the dramatic increase in demand over the last few months which has caused problems in sourcing the right stock. Compared to just one year ago sales are 75% higher and this has increased the speed of sale of used BEVs with stock turn increasing by 102% YoY to 5.9x making it still the fastest-selling powertrain in the Dutch market.

Online B2C stock levels eased back by 0.3% going into May compared to the previous month which means they are now 9.7% lower than at the start of May 2021. With demand still high and supply constrained this is keeping the inflationary pressure on used car prices.

Our price index is based on a consistent pool of vehicles indexed against January 2021 and has been reset for the start of the new year which creates a typical uplift of around 2%-4%, followed normally by a lifecycle driven downward curve in average prices. As we have seen in most countries, prices are still on the increase with average online B2C used car prices going into May 0.4 percentage points higher than at the start of the previous month and 6.8pp higher than at the end of last year.

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Background

On the 24th of March INDICATA published its first White Paper “COVID-19 To what extent will the used car market be affected (and how to survive)?”. This document explored:

Early market trends - Initial impact of the virus and the social distancing measures implemented.

Market scenarios – A range of impacts based on infection rate development and historical market data.

Mitigation – Risk assessment by sector coupled with potential corrective actions.

We committed to keeping the market updated with live data, volume, and price, to keep abreast of the fast-moving environment.

As such we are pleased to announce “Indicata Market Watch”.

How do we produce our data?

Indicata analyses 9m Used Vehicle adverts across Europe every day. To ensure data integrity, our system goes through extensive data cleansing processes.

The Sales (deinstall data) in this report are based on advertisements of recognised automotive retailers of true used vehicles. As such, it does not include data related to private (P2P) advertisements.

Where an advert is removed from the internet, it is classified as a “Sale”.

Appendix

INDICATA Market Watch April 2022 (The Netherlands)
INDICATA Market Watch April 2022 (Europe)