Madrid (EFE).- Vehicle production grew by 5.8% in 2022 compared to 2021, when it had suffered a drop of 7.5%, and reached 2.22 million units, thanks to the improvement in flows of raw materials and the increase in the availability of semiconductors in the last months of the year.
According to data from the National Association of Automobile and Truck Manufacturers (Anfac), 175,245 vehicles were manufactured in Spain in December, 18.9% more than in the last month of 2021.
Despite the increase in car production in 2021, the number of units produced is still below what it was in 2019, the year before the covid-19 pandemic, when it was 2.8 million units.
According to the association, the figure for 2022 is in volumes of 600,000 fewer vehicles produced than in 2019.
Anfac, despite the improvement in supplies in the last months of 2022, remains reticent in the face of supply problems in the factories, it indicated this Thursday in a statement.
Transportation problems may limit export in 2023
In this sense, manufacturers warn of a new “bottleneck”, that of distribution problems to transport vehicles both by sea and by road, which could limit export capacity in 2023.
According to Anfac data, in 2022 1.78 million passenger cars were produced, 7.4% more than in 2021, and only in December the year-on-year increase was 24.1%, reaching 139,628 units in the month .
The production of commercial and industrial vehicles experienced a slight reduction, of 0.4% in 2022, with 434,030 units produced.
In December, 2% more commercial and industrial vehicles were manufactured than in the same month of the previous year, with 35,617 units.
The production of zero and low emission vehicles (electric, plug-in hybrids, conventional hybrids, natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas) increased by 31.9% in 2022 compared to the previous year, with 319,605 units.
In December, the production of this type of vehicle increased by 89% compared to the same month in 2021, with 31,116 units.
The manufacturing share of electrified vehicles (pure electric and plug-in hybrids) increased by almost 3 percentage points in 2022 compared to the previous year.
Its production increased by 37.5% in 2022, with 268,071 units, of which 230,554 corresponded to pure electric cars and plug-in hybrids, which increase by 25% compared to 2021.
In December, the production of electrified vehicles increased by 70.8%, to 23,404 units.
Exports increase by 3.3% in 2022
For their part, exports increased by 3.3% in 2022 compared to 2022, with a total of 1.88 million vehicles shipped across borders.
The increase in December was 16.2% compared to the same month of 2021 and 148,434 units were exported in the last month of 2022.
Anfac has indicated that, despite the fact that 2022 has ended with positive data, the rate of production and export capacity of the factories were affected last year by the semiconductor crisis and the economic uncertainty due to the war in Ukraine.
The manufacturer association points out that the markets outside Europe have had a greater recovery than the European ones, which have not been able to reach the levels of before the pandemic.
