August sales: all-time high for our Recharge cars
A shortage of material continues to challenge the auto industry, and we’re not an exception. Troubles aside, we have an all-time high to report – and it’s about our Recharge cars!
The sales of our Recharge line-up of chargeable cars reached a record high in August.
We were probably all ready to retire the phrase ‘an unusual year’ after 2020, but it seems like we can’t shake it just yet. Earlier this year, we were in full swing, reporting sales growth and setting new records, month after month. This month, overall numbers aren’t quite as positive as in the first half of the year, but we still have an all-time high for you – so let’s look at our Recharge sales.
They’ve been going strong this year, and that momentum keeps building: in August, they accounted for 24.2 per cent of all cars sold in the month. And in Europe, a whopping 47 per cent of all cars sold in the region were from the Recharge line-up, which is the biggest share we’ve reported so far. Our chargeable models proved especially popular in the Netherlands, the UK and Belgium this month, as they were the top contributors to our increased Recharge sales in Europe.
For our global sales we reached 45,786 cars in August, a 10.6 per cent decrease compared with the same period last year. But it’s not due to a lack of interest – we still see that the overall underlying demand in the auto industry, and for our cars, remains very robust.
The main reason for the decline is material shortage: since mid-July, supplier shut-downs due to Covid-19 in South East Asia, especially in Malaysia, has worsened an already strained supply situation. These material shortages have led to temporary production halts at our facilities in Sweden, Belgium, China and the US, with reduced production volumes as a result.
“The overall underlying demand for our cars remains very robust”
Our current expectation is that, for the second half of 2021, it will be challenging to match the volume levels we achieved during the same period in 2020. This will of course have an impact on our revenue and profit, but our outlook for the full year 2021 still remains.
When it comes to our three key regions, the US is the only one with an increase last month. Here, customers particularly fancied the XC90, which led this month’s sales charts, followed by the XC60. Despite a strong underlying demand and order intake, China reported a double-digit decrease in August, as did Europe – the main reasons being the previously mentioned Covid-19 outbreaks in South East Asia, material shortage and lowered production volumes.
All this means that for the first eight months of the year, we’re now at 483,426 cars sold all around the globe – an increase by 26.1 per cent compared with the same period last year.
See a detailed break-up of regional sales below:
+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------+------------+----------+
| |August | | |January- | | |
| | | | |August | | |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------+------------+----------+
| | 2020 | 2021 | Change | 2020 | 2021 | Change |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------+------------+----------+
| Europe | 17,493 | 13,052 | -25.4% | 169,427 | 202,282 | 19.4% |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------+------------+----------+
| China | 15,835 | 13,112 | -17.2% | 95,986 | 122,914 | 28.1% |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------+------------+----------+
| US | 10,378 | 10,686 | 3.0% | 63,330 | 86,015 | 35.8% |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------+------------+----------+
| Other | 7,533 | 8,936 | 18.6% | 54,749 | 72,215 | 31.9% |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------+------------+----------+
| Total | 51,239 | 45,786 | -10.6% | 383,492 | 483,426 | 26.1% |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+------------+------------+----------+
