New Quest Economic Report

Growth trends of production and sales of the German automotive industry at 1.8% resp. 3.3% per year

The new Quest Report covers the current trend in the automotive industry. This trend is a growth trend that began at the beginning of 2014 and is shaping both automobile production in Germany and its sales development. The trend is methodically determined as an average of the last twelve months.

The growth trend in car production from the beginning of 2014 to September 2018 is 1.8% per year. This slight growth trend is below the level of the slight growth in global automobile production of 2.6% per year from 2007 to 2017. Without automobile production in China, world automobile production would have stagnated at 0.5% per year since 2007. However, growth in automobile production in China so far in 2018 has been lower than in 2017.

The Quest Report proves the greater fluctuation range of automobile production with only slight growth. This reflects a structural change in the course of global industrial production, which is also having an impact on the German machinery industry. Without this structural change, the range of fluctuation in production would decrease and not increase with stagnation or slight growth.

From the beginning of 2014 to September 2018, the German automotive industry's sales trend was at 3.3% per year, i.e. one and a half percentage points above automobile production.

This report is a module of the comprehensive trend analysis of the worldwide automotive industry in the Quest Trend Magazine. The trend analyses include the internationalization of production sites, the world regions of car production, the share of car production in China at world car production, the market shares of the world market leaders and the market leaders in China.

These trend analyses in the Quest Trend Magazine make planning and market development for one of the most important sales markets in automation technology easier for the suppliers of automation technology.