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A car transport ship makes its way along the river Rhine in Germany. Picture: REUTERS
A car transport ship makes its way along the river Rhine in Germany. Picture: REUTERS

New car sales in the EU rose 0.2% in July, slowed by declines in France and Germany, while battery electric vehicles continued to lose market share, data from Europe’s auto industry body showed on Thursday.

Improvements in the Belgian, Dutch and French electric vehicle (EV) markets failed to offset a drop of almost 37% in Germany's battery-electric sales, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) said.

Car sales have shown mixed trends across the bloc, in part due to diverging policies on green incentives, while regulators have imposed hefty tariffs to try to keep out cheap Chinese EVs.

Electrified vehicles — whether fully electric models, plug-in hybrids or full hybrids — sold in the EU accounted for 50.9% of all new passenger car registrations in July, up from 47% a year earlier.

But sales of battery electric and plug-in cars fell by 10.8% and 14.1% respectively, while those of hybrid-electric cars jumped 25.7%.

Car registrations at Europe’s three largest carmakers Volkswagen, Stellantis and Renault fell in July from a year earlier by 2.2%, 5.2% and 1.7%, respectively, amid growing competition from China.

Sales of EV-maker Tesla dropped by 14.7%, while those for China’s SAIC Motor were up 24.2%.

On August 20 the European commission cut its proposed tariff on imports of Tesla cars built in China to 9%, while broadly maintaining plans for tariffs on Chinese-made EVs of up to 36.3%.

Stellantis, which saw the biggest drop in sales among EU carmakers, had reported a bigger than expected fall in revenue and operating profit for the first half, also due to internal operational issues.

Reuters

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