Danish Auto Sales is contracting in 2024. Car passenger sales in November dropped 8.9%, with 14,808 new registrations. YTD figures reached 154,322 units, down 1%. Volkswagen became new leader as Tesla dropped to 2nd while Toyota rose one spot into 3rd.
Market Trend and Outlook
The Danish economy enjoys strong industrial production expansion, driven in large part by the pharmaceutical sector. Expansion in this sector was particularly strong in late 2023, implying that the economy entered 2024 with a strong carry-over supporting solid growth for the year as a whole. The positive growth outlook is set to continue in 2025, when lower interest rates and stable inflation are projected to underpin growth and employment. Overall, real GDP is forecast to grow by 2.6% in 2024 before easing to a rate of 1.4% in 2025.
Despite the overall favourable economic outlook, the Danish auto market fell 8.9% in November, reporting 14,808 new registrations (+8.9%). YTD figures at 154,322 were up 1% compared to the prior year.
Looking at cumulative data up to November 2024 brand-wise, the leader became Volkswagen -up 1 spot- with 18,018 sales (+24.8%), followed by Tesla -down 1 spot- with 13,657 registrations (-25.2%) and Toyota -up 1 spot- with 11,884 units sold (+10.6%).
In 4th position ranked Mercedes -up 2 spots- at 11,322 sales (+31.8%) in front of Audi -down 2 spots- with 11,151 registrations (-9.2%), Skoda -down 1 spot- with 9,803 units sold (+13.2%), BMW -up 2 spots- with 8,654 sales (+20%) and Peugeot -down 1 spot- at 8,060 (-2.7%).
Renault climbed 7 spots and ranked 9th with 6,650 sales (+73.1%) while Volvo -up 4 spots- closed the top 10 with 5,753 new registrations (+30.5%).
Looking at specific models, reported in the dedicated article, the Tesla Model Y sold the most cars despite falling 42.8% compared to the previous year, followed by the Volkswagen ID.4 which boomed 127.2% in year-on-year volume.
Medium-Term Market Trend
In the past decade the Danish auto market has had 2 main trends. In the first part of the decade the market grew almost doubling in volume, starting in 2010 at 141,505 and reaching an all-time high of 231,551 sales in 2016. The trend inverted in 2017, starting a long downtrend, that would be interrupted briefly in 2019 with a 3.6% growth to 225,219 sales.
In 2020 arrived the pandemic that caused many European markets to collapse, and the Danish one was no exception, falling 12.1% to 198,034 new car sales.
The fall continued through 2021, reporting a 6.4% loss, and 2022, which lost another 20% from the prior year. 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. Despite, it totalled 172,719 sales in 2023, growing 16.5% in comparison to the prior year.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group, and Top 10 models.
