Rising personal leasing demand and LCV take-up helped offset declining business contract hire for cars in Q2, new data from the BVRLA shows.
Its Q2-2020 Quarterly Leasing Survey shows the overall BVRLA lease car and van fleet shrank by 3.6% year-on-year, down to 2,532,972. The figure comprises 83% cars and 17% vans, with a 2.1% rise in the LCV fleet size partially offsetting the 5.2% drop in the total car fleet, excluding all rental and PCP vehicles.
Business contract hire saw its largest-ever fall since the survey began, with cars down by 9.7% year-on-year to 793,171 – believed to be the result of the disruption caused by the Covid-19 lockdown.
In contrast, the personal contract hire car fleet increased by 5.7% to 271,264, showing the sector’s continued growth, albeit at the lowest rate yet recorded.
The study also shows surging uptake of battery electric vehicles; the number of battery electric vehicles on the BVRLA fleet was up 1.8% year-on-year and new BEV registrations on the fleet rose 5.5% compared to the same period last year.
Helped by this, average CO2 emissions for BVRLA members’ new car registrations fell from 109g/km in Q1 2020 to 107g/km in Q2 2020 while average CO2 emissions for the total BVRLA car fleet were down from 112.0g/km to 111.3g/km over the same period.
The BVRLA also published the latest Leasing Broker Survey, showing that brokers continue to represent a growing sector of the market. The BVRLA leasing broker channel fleet has grown by 7% year-on-year, with 362,461 cars and vans on fleet.
But despite seeing an increase in the number of consumer contracts for cars, brokers have been adversely affected by the Covid pandemic, with new contracts for both cars and vans dropping sharply in the first half of 2020, compared to H1 2019, down 13% and 12% respectively.
