The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has revealed the new car registration figures, for October 2024. They are not good. For the month of October the market is 6% down on 2023. Even Fleet dropped, for the first time in a long while. One bright spark, no pun intended, is that EV registrations grew to 20.7% market share for the month. This is to be expected as the end of 2024 approaches and so do the fines for not hitting the mandated levels. Click this link to read more, from the SMMT’s own article.
Following a court ruling regarding commission on finance agreements, the industry has been thrown into turmoil as there are questions on what they need to do in order to be compliant. Some companies have halted all offerings for car finance until the situation is clarified. You can find out more, by clicking this AMOnline article link here.
The number of brands that are reporting challenging results, after Q3, has grown. There is a real problem for the industry, globally, and it might not get better anytime soon. Expect a lot of management word salads, littered with the likes of “efficiencies” and “cost-cutting” etc.
BMW’s woes thanks to the ongoing brake recall and huge profit drop, can be read about by clicking this Reuters article link here.
To read about Audi’s problems, click this Autocar link. Audi plan to cut jobs to help save money, click this Reuters article link here, to find out what that means.
Toyota are also hit by problems, with quality issues, safety recalls, plant stoppages and a Chinese market that is proving tough for all but the home grown brands. Click this Yahoo Finance article link to read more.
Honda announced a surprise drop in profits, thanks in large part to the ongoing issues in the Chinese market as their economy struggles. Click here to read more from a Yahoo Finance article link.
Nissan are not immune to the industry wide slump. They announced the cutting of around 9,000 jobs and dramatically that they are entering “emergency mode” as profits drop 304%. You can read more, from Autocar, by clicking this link here.
JLR profits hall 10%, which is being blamed largely on the aluminium supplier issue discussed a few weeks ago,
