In the first six months of the current year, new vehicle registrations rose by 2.8% to 42.64m units worldwide, the International Organisation of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, or OICA, told a news conference on the sidelines of the IAA auto show.
"Considering we have a major crisis in Europe, this is not a bad result," OICA chief Patrick Blain told reporters.
By region, new vehicle sales in Europe fell by 6.0% to 9.3m, while sales in the Americas grew by 6.6% to 12.38m units and sales in Asia, Pacific and the Middle East were up 4.9% at 20.19m, the data showed.
"Emerging markets are again leading this growth. Mature markets now represent only 47% of worldwide sales. (They) are now a minority," Blain said.
Blain said China and the United States were the world's biggest markets by sales. New vehicle sales in China jumped by 12.3% to 10.78m and US sales grew by 7.3% to 7.96m cars.
In terms of passenger cars alone, global sales grew by 1.9% to 31.46m, with European sales contracting by 5.8% to 8.14m units, sales in the Americas up 4.5% at 6.8m units and sales in Asia, Pacific and Middle East up 5.1% at 15.95m.
In China, passenger car sales were up 13.8% at 8.67m units and US car sales grew by 4.2% to 3.9m, the OICA data showed.
Demand in the emerging economies has also buoying global vehicle production which rose by 1.8% to 43.7m units in the six-month period.
Blain said that over past eight years, output had increased by 30% in all adding the the industry had seen some regular ups and some steep downs.
"It would definitely need a huge global crisis to stop growth at global level. We're still facing difficulties in some areas of this world, but this does not prevent global production from continuing to grow," Blain said.
"The need for mobility in emerging countries is now higher and more than compensates the decrease in big region like Europe," he added.
Overall, the OICA calculated that there were a total 1.097bn vehicles in use worldwide in 2011, the latest year for which data were available. That represented an increase of 4.0% over 2010. "At least 73% of those vehicles were passenger cars," OICA said.
The so-called motorisation rate, the number of cars per 1,000 inhabitants, was lowest in Africa, where there were just 41 cars per 1,000 people.
"By contrast, in the United States, Canada and Mexico, there were 644 vehicles for every 1,000 inhabitants while in China, the motorisation rate still low at just 68 but growing fast," Blain said.
He said that in countries like Indonesia, where there are 84 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, there was still huge potential for increased sales.
Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge
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