The low registrations in Spain in 2022 were due, in large part, to the lack of components (especially microchips). That prevented there being a stock and prices from rising due to not being able to meet the demand. Now, it seems that the mismatch in 2023 will come from logistics. Manufactured cars crowd the factories and ports waiting to reach their destination. The reason? Since 2019, before the pandemic, there are 25% fewer auto transport trucks.
As explained to EFE by the president of the Transportave association, José Manuel Peña, in 2019 there were between 3,400 and 3,500 trucks in Spain for the transport of vehicles. Today, barely 2,700. These are expensive vehicles (between 240,000 and 250,000 euros), in some cases double that of an equivalent truck. With a higher cost of maintenance and insurance of the merchandise, according to what the truckers say. And the postage is not being paid, denounces Peña.
To the increase in costs we must add the slow recovery of the rate of production. Given the lower workload, trucks were abandoned that are now necessary in the face of a higher peak of work. The result is that finished cars do not reach the dealerships that have them assigned.
This problem already began to be felt at the end of the year, as denounced by the Faconauto dealership and distributors association, which reported bottlenecks in the transport of vehicles from factories or ports and that caused decreases in the number of cars new registered in December (just 73,927 units, -14.1% than in December 2021).
There are already large numbers of vehicles crowded in ports. In The Mountain Journal We read that on December 22 some 15,000 cars were stored, with serious space problems. And in The voice of Galicia We see that at the end of the year the Bouzas terminal in the port of Vigo had to use unprecedented spaces to accumulate manufactured Setellantis cars.
Source: EFE
