The Swiss car market saw some ups and downs in July, including a slight fall in true fleet registrations.

The Ford Focus saw the highest growth among the 20 most registered fleet models in Switzerland in July

Analysis by Dataforce’s Christian Spahn shows that passenger car registrations last month fell slightly compared to the corresponding prior year’s month (-0.8%). While commercial registrations saw a moderate 0.2% rise, the private market declined by 1.7%. Within the commercial channels, it was once again the dealer/manufacturer segment (+ 8.6%) being responsible for the growth. However, both true fleet (-2.7%) and short-term rental registrations (-7.7%) declined year-on-year.

But despite the repeated losses, the true fleet market proved to be healthier than in the first half of the year, with only 137 company car registrations fewer in July than in the same month last year. This can also be seen when looking at the various regions. For example, some significant growth was recorded in the company car segment in Eastern Switzerland (+20.3%), Northwestern Switzerland (+7.6%), the Zurich region (+7.2%) and Central Switzerland (+2.0%),

The research also reveals that in addition to other cantons Thurgau (+48.4%), Basel-Stadt (+23.4%), Basel-Landschaft (+13.9%), Zug (+13.3%), St. Gallen (+9.5%) and Zurich (+7.2%) were largely responsible for this development.

A breakdown of the top 10 company cars shows that Skoda led the ranking with an increase of 37.1%, ahead of SEAT (+36.2%) and Mercedes (+32.5%). In addition, Toyota (+15.3%), Ford (+14.0%) and Volvo (+13.9%) also achieved some notable growth. The Ford Focus (+221.1%), the Volvo XC40 (+147.8%) and the Mercedes C-Class (+ 100.0%) achieved the highest growth among the 20 most registered fleet models in comparison to July 2018.

Dataforce’s analysis also shows alternative fuel types are finding their way into Swiss fleets.

In July, true fleet registrations fell for petrol (-8.7%) or diesel cars (-4.8%). In the first seven months of the year, registrations of petrol and diesel cars in the True Fleet market fell by 15.3% and 6.0% respectively. In contrast, alternative fuel types recorded significant growth, especially electric vehicles, which increased by 174.3% over July. From a YTD perspective, over 75% more electric vehicles found their place in vehicle fleets than in the same period last year.

The fleet ranking of electric cars in the first seven months of 2019 is led by the Tesla Model 3 with over 600 registrations, followed by the Renault Zoe, BMW‘s i3, the Hyundai Kona, the Nissan Leaf and the Jaguar I-Pace.