New-vehicle sales in Spain fell 31 percent to 74,490 in August compared with the same month in 2018 when automakers offered big discounts to sell vehicles that were not homologated to meet the EU's new WLTP tests.
Although last month had one less selling day than August of last year, the main reason behind the drop was the spike in registrations in August 2018, industry association ANFAC said.
Demand from private customers last month declined 28 percent to 41,657 units, while registrations by companies dropped 34 percent to 28,672. Sales to rental companies were down 36 percent to 4,161.
Noemi Navas, ANFAC’s director of communications, said: “If we exclude the WLTP effect and compare August with the previous month, we see a persistent decline in demand by private customers, while company demand remains in positive territory.”
Sales of diesel vehicles fell 50 percent to 20,223 and a 27.1 market share, higher than the two previous months but 10.3 percentage points lower than August 2018.
Sales of gasoline cars were down 24 percent to 44,065 units for a 59.2 percent share, up from 54 percent a year ago.
Sales of all electrified cars — full electric and hybrid — plus vehicles powered by liquefied petroleum gas and compressed natural gas grew 11 percent to 10,202 units and claimed a 13.7 percent market share, up from 6.3 percent in August 2018.
Registrations of full-electric cars jumped 59 percent to 639 and took a 0.8 percent share.
Through August, sales in Spain are down 9.2 percent to 883,649 vehicles.