This year is likely to be the best ever for national car production, with Dacia and Ford plants averaging more than 40,000 cars per month. Romania ranks sixth in the EU with higher production than Italy and Hungary, but far below the Czech Republic and Slovakia. How are things in other countries?

In the latest ACEA report, nearly 50 million cars were produced worldwide between January and September, more than 4 million more than in the first nine months of 2021. The first place is occupied by China with 16.3 million cars, as well as the USA. secondly, from 5.3 mln.

7.96 million cars were produced in the EU, which is 5.8% more than in the same period of 2021. However, we are significantly below the pre-pandemic level: in 2019, 10.7 million cars were produced in 9 months.

In Romania, 376,000 vehicles were produced in the first nine months of 2022, with approximately 60% by Dacia and 40% by Ford. Germany is in first place with 2.4 million cars, but well below 2019’s figure of 3.4 million. The second was Spain with 1.27 million, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and France completed the top 5, Romania – sixth.

Italy, Hungary, Belgium and Sweden completed the top 10.

Interestingly, production in Romania was the only one that was higher this year compared to 2019. The biggest percentage drop was in France, where production fell by more than 40%, from 1.2 million cars to less than 700,000. In the Czech Republic, the decline was 10%, to 910,000 cars.

What happened outside the EU? Obviously, the Russian car industry has fallen sharply – from a million cars to 339 thousand, while in Ukraine only 943 cars were produced against 6 thousand in 2021.

ACEA data also shows that Turkey is a strong leader in the region, with 572,000 vehicles produced last year.