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Hybrids appear on the rise

Lower-emitting options among top models as overall new-car registrations fall slightly from year ago.
Posted on 02 May, 2022
Hybrids appear on the rise

The top five new passenger vehicles for registrations last month all offer either a hybrid or plug-in hybrid variant, which suggests the clean car discount has shifted people towards lower-emitting options.

Mitsubishi’s Outlander, pictured, was the leading model with 837 units and a 9.8 per cent share of the market, while Toyota’s RAV4 was second on 716 and 8.4 per cent.

The top five, all of which enjoyed substantial increases in registrations from a year ago, was rounded out by Mitsubishi’s Eclipse Cross on 544, Honda’s Jazz with 487 and the Suzuki Swift on 407.

In total, there were 8,537 new cars registered last month, which was down by 3.1 per cent from 8,812 in the same month of 2021.

As for marques, Toyota topped the table thanks to 1,598 units for an increase of 27.3 per cent from 1,255 in April last year. Its share of last month’s new passenger-vehicle market came in at 18.7 per cent.

Mitsubishi was second on 1,570 – up from 1,188 and by 32.2 per cent year on year to claim 18.4 per cent of last month’s market.

Suzuki came third with a 21.8 per cent jump from 652 in April 2021 to 794 last month. Its monthly share was 9.3 per cent. Hyundai and Honda completed the top five with 608 and 560 registrations respectively.

Mitsubishi remained the leading marque year-to-date with 5,523 registrations and a market share of 15.2 per cent.

Toyota was second on 3,842 units and 10.6 per cent followed by Kia on 2,981 and 8.2 per cent.

The total of new passenger vehicles registered over the first four months of the year was 36,332, which is just 2.6 per cent less than the 37,313 units sold at the same stage of 2021.

The main centres saw only small shifts in activity from the same month a year ago. Auckland’s registrations increased 1.8 per cent from 3,419 units a year ago to 3,480 last month, Wellington was down 1.9 per cent from 1,097 to 1,076 over the same time frame, and Canterbury’s numbers slipped 1.6 per cent from 1,018 to 1,002.

Manawatu-Wanganui had the biggest increase of 8.2 per cent after 396 registrations last month compared with 366 in April last year.

Gisborne and Bay of Plenty suffered the sharpest drops of 24.2 per cent and 22.2 per cent respectively. Registration numbers in Gisborne fell from 62 to 47, while in Bay of Plenty it went from 626 to 487.