New Car Registrations up 2 % in April
Published Date: 13th May 2016
The UK Car market continues to grow with New Car Registrations up 2% for April, this represents stable growth for UK new car sales.
Car Registrations in the UK saw steady increase of 2.0% in April reaching 189,505 units.
Business and fleet departments offset a small fall in private sales.
Alternative fuel vehicles experienced an increase of 26.8%, in line with the year so far.
UK new car registrations saw a slight increase of 2.0% in April, according to figures released from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). 189,505 new cars were registered in April – the most in that month since 2003, where an impressive 194,312 new vehicles were registered.
Just like in March, the UK car market increase in April was led by the business and fleet departments that saw rises of of 6.1% and 2.8% respectively. This cancelled out the 2.5% fall in private registrations.
Petrol and diesel models kept their demand high. Sales of petrol cars went up 3.4% for the month of April, while diesels declined by 0.6%. This follows the trend set in 1st quarter of the year, sales of alternative fuel vehicles rose by more than a quarter as consumers look to reduce CO2 emissions and daily running costs.
Last month’s figures put registrations for 2016 to date up 4.4% compared to 2015. This comes just after a record March in which more than 518,000 cars were sold – the second-biggest month on record. Demand for cars has been running at a high level, after 43 consecutive months of growth in the market led to an all-time high of 2.63 million car registrations in 2015.
Mike Hawes, SMMT Chief Executive, announced, “After such a strong March, April’s steadier performance was to be anticipated, and is in line with our expectations for the year. Consumer confidence remains high as buyers continue to capitalise on attractive finance deals, although this could be affected by political and economic uncertainty in the coming months.”