ECG — 2025-01-28
News from ECG
Outlook 2025 is a difficult topic for those involved in the new car market. Already market forecasters S&P Global issued a statement downgrading their previous outlook. “2025 automotive forecasts have been downgraded across the board, reflecting expected post-election US policy shifts,” the release says adding: “The global auto sector remains focused on managing production and inventory levels in response to regional demand patterns, which include slower growth in key markets, in some cases related to slower electric vehicle adoption rates.”
All in all sales in Central & Western Europe are expected to have hit 15 million units in 2024 and rise by just 0.1% in 2025. This slower growth is a reflection of the challenges related to the drive to electrification of the passenger car fleet. But, despite the challenges, the forecasters still predict growth of 43.4% in Central & Western Europe for battery electric vehicles in 2025, such that the BEV market share will rise to 20.4% of the total 15.1 million units expected to sell in the region. To put the numbers in perspective, that’s just 3.08 million EV sales expected in the region in 2025.
Indeed this reflects the status in the used car market, as per data from the Autovista group. Tracking the Residual Value (RV) of used cars by the different powertrains is a vital barometer of the new car market.
So for this analysis using data supplied by Autovista, we looked at the RVs of three main powertrains: petrol, diesel and battery electric across a range of 6 countries in Europe. On average the residual value of passenger cars in Europe has dropped from 53.6% in January 2024 to 50.3% by year end, a 3.3 percentage point decline.
But the devil is in the detail and if we break down the analysis by powertrain, keeping in mind that you would want as much of your car’s value to be retained when selling it to the second hand car market.
On average the RV for petrol cars in Europe was 54.6% at the start of 2024, but dropped to 51.7% by the end of the year reflecting a 2.9 percentage point drop.
For diesel cars the RV started off at 53.8% in January 2024, dropping 3.4 percentage points to 50.4% by year end.
And electric vehicles. The resale value of EVs started off at 43.8% in January 2024 but dropped dramatically to 39.06% by year end.
ECG members can download the full Outlook 2025 report here.