INDICATA Market Watch: Used petrol stock levels falling
Used petrol stock levels falling
The Dutch market has long embraced the move towards greener motoring, particularly in the new car market where BEVs are the second best-selling powertrain taking 26.2% of this year’s new car market. Hybrids and plug-in hybrids took 23.1% and 13.4%, respectively, and whilst petrol remains the most popular with 35.6% of sales, diesel is now just 1.3%.
But why is this so important in a used car market report? If we look at the online B2C used car sales market, petrol accounts for 61.5% of sales in May, significantly higher than its new car market share. In stark contrast, whilst new BEVs are 26.2% of new cars sold, they represent just 6.31% of the used cars, a market share that has risen by just 26.2% year-on-year.
Worse still for BEVs is that even though prices have dropped from the premiums seen in 2022, and by the start of June, they were at just 99.0 percentage points in our pricing index, it has only had a minimal impact on demand with Market Days’ Supply at 134 days. That MDS means BEVs sell almost 50% slower than the second-slowest powertrain of used hybrids.
This has left dealers and traders with rapidly rising levels of stock. At the start of June, BEVs represented over 10% of online B2C used car stock.
There are also used car buyers who still prefer to buy diesel which is why online B2C used diesel car sales accounted for 15.7% of the May market but with new diesel sales hovering at just above the 1% mark, where will they go for their next car?
Our online B2C used car retail price index is based on a consistent pool of vehicles indexed against January 2022 and would generally see a lifecycle-driven downward curve in average prices. At the start of June, prices were 0.3pp lower month-on-month and are now just 2.3pp higher than at the beginning of 2022.
At a powertrain level, BEV prices continue to fall, but even as they drop to 99.0pp, it is not enough to reinvigorate sales and bring down stock levels.
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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 May 2023 (The Netherlands)
INDICATA Market Watch May 2023 (Europe)
