French True Fleet Market stumbles out of the blocks in January

The French True Fleet Market appears to be recovering from a slight overindulgence while celebrating the record year of 2016 producing a - 1.5 % for January. However this was still the 2nd highest January on record for True Fleet since Dataforce statistics started in 2004. Private and Dealership/Manufacturer showed healthy gains over Jan 2016 but it was the Short Term Rental Market showing by far the most interesting gain, achieving a + 51.9% . In total the passenger car Market recorded + 10.6% and registered a little over 153,000 vehicles again making this the best January volume since 2012.

After seeing the gains in the Short Term Rental channel piquing our interest we decided to look further into the numbers. While it was no surprise the majority of the 51.9% gain came from the home grown manufacturers of Peugeot, Citroen and Renault it was Ford with a + 696.4% and Nissan with + 181.5% that took our focus, literally for one of those manufacturers. From Nissan the SUV segment was predominantly where those gains were made. Juke proved to be the leader in terms of growth percentage gain followed by the X-Trail and then the Qashqai in comparison to January 2016. Ford’s highest percentage growth gains were spread over three vehicle segments, C-Max in the Mini-Van segment came in 3rd, Kuga in the SUV segment in 2nd but our focus was firmly on the Focus which came in 1st. Achieving 26.7% of all Ford’s Short Term Rental registration’s for January 2017 which in comparison to January 2016 result of 3.6% marks it out as a particularly noteworthy rise within the Ford line up.

As we looked into manufacturer rankings for True Fleet the Top 10 remained the same with only place changes for January. Renault in 1st and Peugeot in 2nd swapped places when compared to last year, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th remained the same for Citroen, VW, BMW and Audi respectively. Ford in 7th and Toyota in 8th each jumped a place at the expense of Nissan, which in 9th dropped 2 places. Mercedes finished out the Top 10 retaining its 10th position but only just with Fiat hot on its heels.

Staying with True Fleet and in particular the fuel type for the SUV segment we are starting to see an ever increasing amount of hybrids registered in the segment. As more manufacturers add hybrid to their SUV engine line–up, the True Fleet Market’s appetite has also grown accordingly so much so that it is perhaps now poised in 2017 to overtake Petrol as the 2nd most common fuel type in the SUV segment even though the hybrid bonus is scheduled to expire in March. Over Jan 2016 to Jan 2017 it has more than doubled its share in the segment moving from 3.9% to 8.5% whereas Petrol has moved from 12.7% in Jan 2016 to 9.5% in Jan 2017. No surprises in perhaps who is the strongest manufacturer, Toyota, but with Kia entering the fray with Niro, Audi bringing the Q7 and even Mercedes introducing the GLC, the market look set to continue its growth. Final mention for the release rightly belongs to Toyota and specifically the C HR as it became the #1 registered hybrid for True Fleet SUV in January 2017 beating out its stable mate the RAV 4 which has held the #1 spot for the last 6 months in a row.

DATAFORCE – Focus on Fleets
Dataforce is the leading provider of fleet market data and automotive intelligence solutions in Europe. In addition, the company also provides detailed information on sales opportunities for the automotive industry, together with a wide portfolio of information based on primary market research and consulting services. The company is based in Frankfurt, Germany.

Contact: Michael Gergen
Dataforce Verlagsgesellschaft für
Business Informationen mbH
Hamburger Allee 14
60486 Frankfurt/Main
Phone: +49 69 95930-231
Fax: +49 69 95930-333
Email: michael.gergen@dataforce.de
www.dataforce.de

This release was published on openPR.