The German passenger car market benefited from a 9.1 per cent boost in new passenger car registrations in May suggesting a healthy rebound - after a sluggish start to the year - partially thanks to one extra working day over the same period last year, but more research indicates a large boost from vehicles being registered as rental cars, schmidtmatthias.de research suggests.
Almost every eighth car registered as a rental car
In May, according to Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt data, 13.1 percent of total new passenger cars registrations went to the rental market. This resulted in a 33.1 per cent increase over the same period last year, or increasing at a rate of more than three times faster than the total market rate in May, to 43,693 units. To put this into perspective this equated to narrowly under the total amount of new cars registered in neighboring Luxembourg last year.
Likely ride hailing and car sharing boost
A recent change in the law within the German private car hire market has allowed operators such as UBER to enter the market, competing with traditional taxi drivers, with many drivers choosing to hire their vehicles. Toyota a firm favorite with ride hailing drivers saw its German new car registrations rise by 18.3 per cent in May, or double the total market growth rate. A Toyota spokesperson confirmed that this could well be a contributing factor to the Japanese car manufacturers success in May. Another contributing factor is likely to be the roll-out of car sharing fleets across Germany. SIXT, formerly BMW Group's partner in its DriveNow car sharing service recently began an intensive fleet roll-out of it own "SIXT Share" car sharing service throughout the country. Volkswagen are also currently in the process of rolling-out their "We Share" car sharing service, with the introduction of 2,000 pure electric cars in Berlin.