New-car sales results around the world for the first half of 2022

Australia’s half-year new car sales tally of 537,858 vehicles puts us on a path to 1.1 million vehicles by year's end. The market is currently down 5.2 per cent on the same time last year, with the back half of 2021 slightly slower than the lead, resulting in 1,049,831 sales.

But with the mid-year result a key indicator for most markets, we’ve had a look to see where things are looking bright, and where they aren’t in a post-lockdown, supply-constrained, semiconductor-drained market.

Figures report 802,079 cars as sold in the UK so far this year, a drop of 11.9 per cent on the same period in 2021.

Petrol power is still king, accounting for 43.8 per cent of all sales, while only 5.7 per cent of sales are for diesel cars (compared to 34.5 per cent in Australia).

Fully-electric (14.4 per cent), plug-in hybrid (6.4 per cent) and closed-loop hybrid (11.4 per cent) vehicle sales are up 43.1 per cent on the equivalent sales for June 2021.

The best-selling car is the Vauxhall Corsa at 22,212 units, followed by the Ford Puma (18,367) and Nissan Qashqai (16,583).

The top-selling electric car is the Tesla Model Y with 12,011 sales so far in 2022.

With over one million cars sold per month, the US new-car market looks quite rosy, but the total of 6,859,612 vehicles sold so far in 2022 is down 17.9 per cent over the same period in 2021. Passenger car sales (1,479,636) alone are down 25 per cent year on year.

The biggest share of the market goes to General Motors with a 15.9 per cent stake, but Tesla is the ninth-strongest seller with a four per cent share of the US new-car market so far this year (273,618 vehicles).

So far this year, the Ford F-Series is the number-one vehicle in the USA with 299,345 sales, followed by the Chevrolet Silverado at 259,516 and Ram pick-up range (244,983).

The top-selling SUV is the Toyota RAV4 at 200,885 sales (almost 10 times Australia's volume), and the best-selling passenger car is the Toyota Camry at 135,925 cars delivered.

With 2.2 million vehicles sold so far this year, compared to 2.6 million in 2021 (2,211,201 v 2,614,025), Japan’s market is down 15.4 per cent year on year.

Split into three categories – mini (Kei cars), non-mini and 'imported' (including classics) – the Japanese market is heavily weighted toward domestic production (35.7 per cent Kei-cars and 57.4 per cent non-mini cars) with only 6.9 per cent of vehicles sold in Japan made elsewhere.

The 153,954 imported cars sold – led by Mercedes-Benz, with 15.8 per cent share – includes some much older, non-new models, with 10 Pontiacs and 43 Autobianchis among the yearly total.

The top-selling electric car is the Nissan Leaf, with 6345 cars sold in the six months elapsed so far this year, against almost 11,000 throughout all of 2021.