Utes dominate February sales before feebates kick in

Thursday, 3 March 2022

February was another record month, with new car sales largely keeping pace with 2021's record year so far in 2022.

Last year saw a record number of new vehicles registered in New Zealand, and 2022 looks to be solidly following that trend, with yet another record sales month in February.

Following a slightly soft January, the overall market is down 1.2 per cent on 2021 (which is just 316 units), however February picked back up to exceed the total number of registrations in February 2021 by 0.5 per cent, setting yet another a new record for the month.

Overall, 12,551 new vehicles were registered in February, representing a 63-unit increase over the same month last year, which was previously the biggest number ever recorded in a February.

The Ford Ranger still leads the market. It could drop off with the introduction of the feebate. Or it could increase with the introduction of the all-new model.

Registration of 7680 passenger cars and SUVs for February 2022 were down 11.8 per cent (1032 units) on February 2021 while, as expected before the introduction of the high carbon emitter fee aspect of the Clean Car Discount scheme, commercial vehicle registrations were up 29 per cent, with 4871 registrations.

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“As anticipated with the pending changes to the Clean Car Discount scheme from April, there has been a shift in sales patterns ahead of the full feebate coming into effect,” said Motor Industry Association Chief Executive David Crawford.

“Sales of passenger cars and SUVs has softened slightly whereas sales of light commercial vehicles, most of which will pay a fee from the 1st of April onwards, have strengthened. This is expected and will likely to be repeated in March sales.

However, Crawford said that once the feebate side of the scheme comes into effect on the 1st of April it is anticipated sales of light commercial vehicles will soften.

As such, utes were again the sales leaders in February, with the Ford Ranger leading the way on 1111 units, followed by the Toyota Hilux (890 units) and the Mitsubishi Triton in third place (855 units). Meanwhile, the Mitsubishi Outlander was the top-selling passenger vehicle with 546 units, followed by the Tesla Model 3 (351 units) and the Suzuki Swift (290 units).

Toyota remained the overall market leader for February with a 16 per cent market share (1,972 units), followed by Mitsubishi with 15 per cent (1,927 units) and Ford in third spot with 11per cent of the market. However, Mitsubishi is still the market leader year-to-date, with an 18 per cent share, ahead of Toyota (12 per cent) and Ford (10 per cent).

There were 684 full battery electric and 388 plug-in hybrid electric passenger vehicles registered in February. The top-selling EVs were the Tesla Model 3 (351 units) followed by the Hyundai Kona (54 units) and the Kia Niro (35 units), while the top-selling PHEVs were the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross (228 units) followed by the MG HS (57 units) and the Mitsubishi Outlander (25 units).

The Pick Up/Chassis 4x4 segment was the largest for February, with a 21 per cent share, followed by Compact SUVs with 19 per cent, then the Medium SUVs with 16 per cent of the overall market.

Year to date there has been a small reduction on the overall share of the market for small vehicles, down from 56 per cent for most of the 2021 to 53 per cent for February, reflecting the strong sales of light commercial vehicles ahead of the Clean Car Discount feebate scheme taking effect.