When will you boost you who could convince you to buy a new car this year? © RENAULT – The electric Renault 5 continues to make a box in car sales in France. Save save Receive automobile market alerts buying a new car is no longer too much your thing, it looks like. The proof in figures. The French automotive market continues to get bogged down, with in March, a fall in sales of 14.5% compared to the previous year, totaling only 153,842 new vehicles put on the road. This has not managed to take stock since the start of the year, since over the first three months of 2025, the sales contraction reached 7.8%, at 410,085 units. A level similar to that recorded three years ago (March 2022), in full shortage of semiconductors and at the start of the war in Ukraine. This alarming trend strikes all the manufacturers, even if some save the bet. >> Do not miss anything from the automotive news by subscribing to our Autoqua newsletter to stop the hemorrhage of new car sales in France? Let us salute in particular the performance of Renault, which seems in good shape in comparison to the market: sales of its models drop “only 1% by the first three months, 209 registrations. With this remarkable performance, the automotive group (4 brands) is now closer to Stellantis meters (15 brands), at the nearest 134 units. Indeed, March 2025 is tough for the Peugeot parent company, which plummets 17% to fall to 43,343 registrations. While Peugeot dropped from 7% to 23,696 models sold, the Renault brand stabilized (-0.7%) with 29,401 sales. The latter owes a lot to the success of its electric and hybrid models, in particular the R5 E-Tech, which represented around 3,000 sales per month (at the end of March, 9,187 registrations), for an average price of around 31,000 euros. According to the commercial director of the brand Guillaume Sicard, the neo-retro city car has fully played its role as a business booster. Beyond the benefits of the model for the manufacturer, the boss also believes that “the R5 e-tech participates in the transformation of the market”. Read also: Renault 5 e-tech: Discover where and how this small Stellantis electric car is manufactured is not the only one in the red zone, other sizes waded like Tesla (-36.8% at 3,157 units), Volkswagen (-4.8% to 22,917), Toyota (-15.9% to 10,165), Hyundai (-28% to 5 782) (-31.2% to 3,392). But Mercedes collapsed by 48.4% (3,612), while BMW decreases by 36.6% (4,867) and Volvo from -59.6% (1,208). What happens and above all how to stop this hemorrhage? Several factors explain this debacle. The recent fiscal changes (often retroactively carried), in particular the decrease in ecological bonus or downright the abolition of this government aid for companies, as well as the strengthening of the CO2 penalty, slowed down the ardor of potential car buyers. Even though they were faced with exorbitant prices: in 2024, it was necessary to spend 12,000 euros more than 10 years ago to buy a new car. This continuous inflation of prices is the main cause of the fall in sales of new cars in France. But let’s not forget social leasing, which disappeared after three weeks of existence. This device alone allowing the most modest households to rent with purchase option an electric vehicle for around 100 euros per month, generated 50,000 additional sales in March, a year ago. In addition, the expectation of new models promised by the manufacturers, the drop in purchasing power, and these famous customs duties on which Europe, the United States and China refer the ball, warm up the minds. But in fact, general economic uncertainty contributes to this sluggishness of the car market. Faced with this worrying situation, automotive professionals now call for strong measures to relaunch sales. Read also: Trump customs duties: how threatened France and its cars? Receive our latest news twice a week, automotive news at a glance. (tagstranslate) March u00e9 automobile
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