German new car sales see big jump in September

Frankfurt : German new car sales increased sharply in September for the second month in a row, official data showed on Wednesday.

The KBA transport authority recorded 298,002 new cars on the road in September, an increase of 9.4 percent over the same month in 2015.

September's figure follows a big increase of 8.3 percent reported by the KBA in August.

Scandal-hit manufacturer Volkswagen -- which in September 2015 admitted to installing software to cheat emissions tests on 11 million cars worldwide -- retained the biggest share of the German market at 19.5 percent for its own-branded cars.

That put this September's figure 1.7 percent higher than the same month in 2015, at 58,000 vehicles.

But over the whole year to September VW's sales remained 1.0 percent lower than last year.

BMW-owned Mini and Daimler flagship Mercedes were the fastest-growing German carmakers, increasing sales 35.3 and 26 percent respectively.

Among foreign carmakers, California-based Tesla saw sales of its electric cars increase by 183 percent -- but in absolute terms sold just 377 vehicles, a market share of 0.1 percent.

A total of 2.56 million cars were sold from January to September, or 6.1 percent more than over the same period last year.