BCN-05 German car sales shrug off new diesel woes

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ZCZC

BCN-05

GERMANY-ECONOMY-AUTOMOBILE

German car sales shrug off new diesel woes

BERLIN, Feb 3, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The number of new car registrations in
Germany leapt in January, industry data showed Friday, even as a new scandal
related to diesel emissions shook the vital sector.

Some 269,400 cars were registered on the roads of Europe’s largest economy
last month, auto industry federation VDA said, an increase of 12 percent
year-on-year.

New registrations of foreign-made cars grew even faster than the overall
market, adding 19 percent to 79,900 units and now account for nearly a third
of the total.

Meanwhile, the market share for diesel cars continued to decline,
accounting for just 33 percent of all new registrations in January, compared
with 45 percent a year earlier.

Diesel’s image has taken a battering since Volkswagen admitted in September
2015 to manipulating millions of cars worldwide, making them appear less
polluting in laboratory tests than they were in real driving conditions.

A number of German cities have even banned diesel cars altogether, cutting
the potential resale value for owners.

The sector faced a fresh wave of trouble in January, after it emerged that
Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler and BMW had funded tests of diesel
exhaust gases on monkeys and humans in the United States and Germany.

Politicians in Berlin and Brussels expressed shock over the reports, but
any impact on sales may only start to make itself felt in February data.

Some 52 percent of Germans said they had “lost confidence” in the auto
industry in a poll published by ARD public television Friday, while a
sizeable majority of 73 percent said politicians treated the vital sector too
leniently.

BSS/AFP/HR/0940