Danish Auto Sales in October 2023 grow for the 10th month in a row, with new registrations at 13,227 (+21.9%). YTD figures at 137,191 are up 14.4% from the previous year. Tesla becomes the best selling brand (+618.0%).
Market Trend and Outlook
The Danish economy has been on a remarkable growth journey, which has boosted employment to the highest level ever. The current account surplus has thus risen sharply and public finances have been positive for six years running.
However, signs of an impending slowdown are starting to show, not least through the higher interest rates and downturn in key export markets. This is expected to push the Danish economy into a new phase, with lower activity and growing unemployment. However, the dampening will be relatively mild and soon replaced by renewed progress during 2024.
The Danish Auto Market is the perfect example of this growth, with sales in October 2023 growing for the 10th month in a row and reaching 13,227 new sales (+21.9%). YTD figures at 137,191 are up 14.4% from the previous year.
Looking at cumulative data up to October 2023 brand-wise, the leader is still Tesla -up 17 spots- with 15,838 sales (+618.0%), followed by Volkswagen with 13,312 registrations (-0.4%) and Audi -up 6 spots- with 11,333 units sold (+72.9%).
In 4th position ranks Toyota at 9,664 sales (-12.2%) in front of Skoda with 7,698 registrations (+7.3%), Peugeot with 7,674 units sold (+4.5%), Hyundai -down 1 spot- with 6,953 sales (-0.7%) and Mercedes -down 5 spots- in 8th at 6,936 (-25.7%).
Ford maintains 9th position with 6,394 sales (+0.9%) and BMW closes the top 10 with 6,225 new registrations (-3.0%).
Looking at specific models the Tesla Model Y sold the most cars reporting a 711.3% increase from the previous year, followed by the Peugeot 208 which grew 53.4% in yearly volume.
Medium-Term Market Trend
In the past decade the Danish auto market has had 2 main trends. In the first part of the decade the market grew almost doubling in volume, starting in 2010 at 141,505 and reaching an all-time high of 231,551 sales in 2016. The trend inverted in 2017, starting a long downtrend, that would be interrupted briefly in 2019 with a 3.6% growth to 225,219 sales.
In 2020 arrived the pandemic that caused many European markets to collapse, and the Danish one was no exception, falling 12.1% to 198,034 new car sales.
The fall continued through 2021, reporting a 6.4% loss, and 2022, which lost another 20% from the prior year. A combination of factors are behind the current industry struggle: the disruption in the global supply chain caused by a lack of raw materials, in particular for the production of microchips and Governments push towards Evs, an expensive alternative for low income consumers.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group, and Top 10 models.
