Danish Auto Sales is off to a slow start in 2024. In March car passengers sales were 16.874 (-6.0%) ending the first quarter with 36,940 sales (-7.6%).Toyota takes the leadership ahead of Tesla and Peugeot.
Market Trend and Outlook
The Danish economy has been on a remarkable growth journey, which has boosted employment to the highest level ever. The current account surplus has thus risen sharply and public finances have been positive for six years running.
However, signs of an impending slowdown are starting to show, not least through the higher interest rates and downturn in key export markets. This is expected to push the Danish economy into a new phase, with lower activity and growing unemployment. However, the dampening will be relatively mild and soon replaced by renewed progress during 2024.
In March car passengers sales were 16.874 (-6.0%), the third lost in a row, ending the first quarter with 36,940 sales (-7.6%).
Looking at cumulative data up to March 2024 brand-wise, the leader becomes Toyota with 3,879 sales (+18.9%), followed by Tesla -down 1 spot- with 3,558 registrations (-31.9%) and Peugeot -up 3 spots- with 2,859 units sold (+16.9%).
In 4th position ranked Volkswagen -down 2 spots- at 2,771 sales (-22.1%) in front of Mercedes -up 4 spots- with 2,372 registrations (+43.3%), Audi -down 2 spots- with 2,158 units sold (-23.3%), Citroen -up 7 spots- with 1,616 sales (+32.7%) and Nissan -up 9 spots- in 8th at 1,595 (+62.4%).
BMW lost 1 position with 1,569 sales (-6.8%) and Renault -up 8 spots- closed the top 10 with 1,521 new registrations (+55.7%).
Looking at specific models the Tesla Model Y sold the most cars despite reporting a 52.0% decrease from the previous year, followed by the Peugeot 208 which decreased 26.1% in yearly 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.
