German new car sales jump in February

FRANKFURT AM MAIN: Sales of new cars increased strongly in Germany in February, industry data showed Friday, but shipments of diesel vehicles continue to fall in the wake of repeated scandals.

The number of new cars registered on the country's roads rose by seven percent to 261,700 last month, figures from manufacturers' association VDA showed.

That brought the total for the first two months of the year combined to 531,100 vehicles, the highest level since 1999, the VDA said in a statement.

Nevertheless, sales of new diesel cars continued to decline, separate data from the KBA vehicle licensing authority showed.

While 62.9 percent of new cars were petrol powered, diesel vehicles accounted for just 32.5 percent -- 19.5 percentage points lower than a year before.

Diesel drivers, politics and industry were held in suspense in February, as a court decision approached on whether the oldest cars powered by the fuel could be banned from city centres to fight air pollution.

Judges at the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig finally approved the measure this week.

Now city, state and federal governments, drivers, the auto industry and environmentalists must wrangle over how to meet targets for levels of harmful nitrogen oxides (NOx) and fine particles in city air -- if possible without driving bans.

In the meantime, the possible urban exclusion zones and a plummet in the resale value of diesel vehicles have put buyers off the fuel.

World-leading carmaker Volkswagen -- at the origin of the diesel scandal after it admitted in 2015 to cheating regulatory tests on millions of cars worldwide -- has found itself in the spotlight again in recent weeks after it emerged that monkeys had been used in diesel emission tests.

The Wolfsburg-based firm was nevertheless able to increase sales of its own-brand cars 12.4 percent year-on-year last month, claiming more than 18 percent of the German market, the KBA data showed.

Neither was there much impact from the scandal on sales of BMW or Mercedes-Benz -- the two high-end carmakers that helped finance the primate study.

Over the first two months, homegrown carmakers increased their German sales by around 8.0 percent, while foreign manufacturers saw their sales grow by 13 percent, the VDA said.