True fleet registrations for 2017 got off to a strong start for the majority of the EU-5 markets, with only France recording a downturn.

France was the only country in the EU-5 markets to record a downturn.

Latest figures from Dataforce show Spain was up +18.0% year on year in January, with Germany and Italy both rising +9.2% and the UK reporting a 5.5% rise. In contrast France fell -1.5%. Overall growth for the month stood at +6.9% for the EU-5.

In Spain, the growth in the true fleet market was joined by a +12.% rise in the total passenger car market, which delivered a little over 89,000 units.

Looking at the most popular vehicle segments of SUV, Compact and Small Car, the latter rose 26.8% as a whole and saw Renault in first followed by Ford, Peugeot, SEAT and VW.

The Compact Car segment grew by just 5.9% but the most significant changes were inside the manufacturers’ top 5 with only VW (second) and SEAT (fifth) remaining from the January 2016 league table. As with the Small Car segment, Ford pushed in, moving from eighth to fourth while both BMW and Audi tripled their volumes, recording growths of +230.8% and +217.5% respectively on their way to third place for BMW and first place for Audi.

Finally, the SUV segment continued its advancement with +29.2% growth when compared to last year but with only one newcomer to the manufacturers’ top 5. Mercedes claimed pole position followed by Nissan, Audi and BMW with Toyota (the newcomer) rounding out the final spot after climbing from 11^th place last year.

In France, the true fleet market recorded a -1.5% downturn for January but this still the second highest January on record for true fleet since Dataforce statistics started in 2004.

Dataforce also noted an ever-increasing amount of hybrids registered in the true fleet SUV segment and they could overtake petrol as the second most common fuel type in the SUV segment even though the hybrid bonus is scheduled to expire in March.

For Germany, growth of +9.2% was recorded for the true fleet market in January while the total market recorded its best January figures since 2003 with a little over 241,000 registrations.

Eight out of the top 10 brands boosted their fleet registrations over January 2016, with both market leader Volkswagen and Mercedes in second position showing double-digit growth rates. Skoda (ranking 6^th behind Audi, BMW and Ford) and Renault (ranking 8^th) though delivered some especially healthy growth with +48.9% and +49.4% respectively.

Dataforce also noted that the share of passenger car registrations with a diesel engine dropped by 3.5 percentage points between January 2016 and January 2017 (70.4% vs 73.9%) for True. A combined 2.4% share for full electric and hybrid models marked a new record. While Hybrids grew by 77.5% over January 2016 the group of BEV (Battery Electric Vehicles) improved their volume even more with +131.3% growth.

In Italy, the true fleet market continued on from its outstanding form in 2016 by producing the highest volume on record for a January with +9.2% growth over January 2016 figures. This has helped propel the passenger car total market to finish with 172,000 registrations equating to +8.7% in terms of growth.

Within January’s top 20 models for True Fleet, the Fiat Tipo was the highest climber moving from 77^th to third, helped by release date. The same might be said of the VW Tiguan moving from 61^st to seventh, the BMW X1 jumping from 44^th to 15^th and the Opel Astra accelerating from 39^th to 16^th, which could have also capitalised with their new generation releases. The Fiat Punto moving from 51^st to eighth, the Lancia Ypsilon shifting from 26^th to ninth and the Mercedes GLC rising from 30^th into 14^th were the remaining entries with only 106 units separating them.

The UK True Fleet Market also started its year positively, with a +5.5% growth, beating the private growth rates and delivering a little less than 60,000 registrations in January. Overall the total market was up 2.9% and while both private and true fleet ended positive, special channels recorded a -4.9% fall.

There were three new additions to January’s true fleet top 10 for manufacturers. Skoda jumped two places into 10^th position, Toyota managed a four-place surge moving from 11^th into seventh position but in terms of highest position jump Kia took the crown accelerating into ninth place from 15^th. While by no means the top in term of registration for Kia the Optima delivered almost 10 times its volume which helped push the brands growth to + 92.2% when compared to January 2016.

Also notable was the performance of the hybrid market for true fleet, which recorded +24% growth and its best ever January on record.

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