Even if this is data coming from their platform (and therefore not necessarily representative of the real price), the average sale price of a used car on Autoscout24 slightly exceeded €30,000 in 2024. The direct consequence a spectacular increase in new prices over the past 5 years, driven by a whole host of things: inflation, energy, electrification but also an increase in margins. Manufacturers will say that it is only to finance the costly ecological transition, others will be annoyed to see increasingly greedy automobile groups, which have not always hidden their famous strategy of “pricing power”. This continued increase has the direct consequence of alienating both businesses, which are in a wait-and-see situation, and individuals, who no longer have the means to follow the trend. And obviously, this is immediately reflected in the figures.
Sales are not increasing
In the year of Covid and lockdowns, when everything was closed, 780,000 individuals still managed to buy a new car. Four years later, while the economy is trying to pick up again and the offer is expanding a little more with electric ones, private sales are not taking off: 798,000 registrations recorded last year (provided that the figures put forward by NGC Data count both purchases and leasing which we asked the company), which is barely better than the same score from 2020, which was particularly bad. It will probably be necessary to exclude the years 2021 and 2022 (720,000 and 698,000 sales respectively) from the elements of comparison, which are not representative enough, since the industry was in serious crisis due to the shortage of components following the post-Covid restart. Clearly, the 2024 financial year was certainly better than the worst of Covid but worse than 2023, and above all much lower than what we experienced before. The distancing of individuals from dealerships is therefore real. And those who continue to buy cars are now turning to brands with lower prices: Dacia (79% of sales to individuals in France, a record), Fiat, Suzuki, Seat… Only Tesla is a special case with a high rate of sales to individuals, but for obvious reasons of lack of popularity with pros and fleets.
Individuals desert
These figures reflect the new home market: down by almost a quarter compared to pre-Covid levels. In 2019, 988,000 individuals purchased a new car, 200,000 more than in 2024. The million individuals (1.04 million in 2018) signing up for a new car per year was the norm before the situation we know today.
The comparison with 2019 is all the more interesting as the level of business registration has barely changed: 481,363 sales in 2019, 471,282 in 2024. In other words, the fall of the French automobile market is directly and almost exclusively linked to the drop in private purchases.. Short-term rental companies also have their share (171,951 sales in 2024, 248,583 sales in 2019) and their situation is a little different from that of individuals: rental companies are waiting and waiting in the face of a more complex offer in terms of motorization and maintenance costs that are more difficult to control.
