When PSA and FCA merged, Volkswagen Group may have been worried that their dominance of Europe was in doubt. For 2023, at least, they have little to fear. Volkswagen Group sales shot up by 25%, giving them a 26% share of the market, while Stellantis sales only rose by 5%, dropping their share down to 17%.
For the year to date (YTD), Peugeot remains the best seller of the STLA brands in Europe (including the EFTA and UK), with 358,009 sales, good for a 5.4% market share—down from 5.9% in YTD 2022. Opel/Vauxhall, formerly owned by PSA, came in at #2, with a 3.7% share. Fiat comes in at #3 within Stellantis, with just over 200,000 sales, a 3.0% share of the industry. Sales growth was 7.4% and 6.3% for Peugeot and Vauxhall, respectively; Fiat fell by 4.2%.
The only real Mopar brand to make the charts was Jeep, which saw sales increase by 11%, to 64,022, reaching a 1.0% market share. Jeep came in at around 1/3 of Citroën sales, and more than double DS sales. Alfa Romeo was fairly similar to DS. Dodge and Ram were in an “others” category with Maserati, racking up 5,116 sales year to date—up around 11%. It’s impossible right now to know how much of that was Dodge and Ram, which are being publicized by Stellantis in Europe now, and how much was Maserati, which gained publicity from its new model reveals.
Stellantis slots between Volkswagen and Renault in European sales YTD 2023:
- Volkswagen—1,701,866
- Stellantis—1,145,815
- Renault—648,467
- Hyundai/Kia—575,432
- Toyota—450,341
- BMW—445,440
- Mercedes/Smart—352,563
- Ford—275,692
- Below 250,000, in order: Tesla, Nissan, Volvo, Mazda, Suzuki, Jaguar Land Rover, Mitsubishi, Honda.
One interesting note is that Volkswagen has six major brands, while Stellantis has eight; from there, no manufacturer has more than two major brands (Renault can be said to have three, with Alpine logging 1,753 sales, but it’s a stretch).
Another interesting note: battery-electric cars surpassed diesels in sales for the first time, with BEVs rising from 11% to 15%, and diesel falling to 13%. Gasoline cars were 36%, hybrids were 24%, plugin hybrids were 8%, and others were 3%.
All figures are courtesy of the ACEA.
