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Hybrids hold out as other car sales tank

Nile Bijoux

New vehicle registrations dropped by more than a quarter last month compared to the same month last year. The Motor Industry Association says this is because of the rising cost of living, high fuel prices, vehicle supply constraints and a weakening New Zealand economy.

Registrations of 8049 passenger cars and SUV’s were down 19.4% (1935 units) compared to July 2021. Registrations of 3052 new commercial vehicles were down 39.8% (2017 units) on July last year and are likely to remain down in coming months because of the effect of the Clean Car Programme.

Overall, the market dropped 26.3% (3952 units) for the month, which has dropped the year-to-date figures down 6.6% compared to the first seven months of last year.

The Toyota Hilux claimed the top spot for the month with 957 units sold, followed by the Toyota RAV4 (690 units) and the Mitsubishi Outlander in third place (685 units).

Year to date, the top three models are the Toyota Hilux (5739 units), followed by the Mitsubishi Outlander (5597 units) and the Ford Ranger (5475 units).

Ford has only just released the new Ranger into the wild, so it will be interesting to see how that shakes things up next month.

There were 550 fully electric vehicles registered last month. The most popular model was the Peugeot e-208 (92 units) followed by the Polestar 2 (80 units) and the Kia EV6 with 40 units.

Registrations of plug-in hybrids were steady at 635 units registered for the month. The top-selling models were the Mitsubishi Outlander (280 units) followed by the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross (164 units) and then the Hyundai Ioniq (35 units).

Finally,1773 hybrids were registered last month. The top-selling models were the Toyota RAV4 (530 units) followed by the Toyota Highlander (227 units) and the Toyota Yaris (123 units).

This is up on the 1166 hybrids registered last month.

Toyota was the market leader for passenger and SUV registrations with 22% of the market (1770 units), followed by Mitsubishi with 15% (1169 units) and Suzuki with 9% market share (719 units).

Mitsubishi retained the market share lead for passenger and SUV year to date with a 16% share (1194 units), followed by Toyota with a 14% share (8793 units) and then Kia with an 11% share (6812 units).

The top-selling passenger and SUV models for the month were the Toyota RAV4 (690 units) closely followed by the Mitsubishi Outlander (685 units) and the Toyota Highlander (335 units).

Drive

en-nz

2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/282570201887397

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