German new car registrations fall 35% in October due to chip shortage

BERLIN (Reuters) - New car registrations in Germany fell 35%, to around 179,000 vehicles, in October as the global semiconductor shortage continues to cause production bottlenecks, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.

"The demand is there," the source said, adding that the industry cannot keep up with supply due to delays in the production of car parts that require semiconductors.

In the past few months, carmakers had to stop production lines due to lagging chip supplies and mostly installed the scarce parts in high-margin larger vehicles, which pushed many customers to buy used cars instead of waiting for a new one.

New registrations had already shrunk by double-digit percentages in the past few months, but not as sharply as in October.

Reporting by Jan Schwartz; Writing by Zuzanna Szymanska, Editing by Miranda Murray

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