Objective accomplished, everything has worked correctly, Enrique Lacalle responded yesterday, visibly satisfied, to the journalists who asked him about his balance of the last edition, held these days, of the Automobile Barcelona.
"We have more sales, more visitors and more brands than ever," the president of the great automotive show abounded. This is a great satisfaction for Fira de Barcelona. In a year that many contests close, we open. The world is in a very difficult situation, but here everything has worked correctly. The truth is that we are very happy”.
Yes, these are times full of uncertainty lately, where economic concerns, social changes and new habits overlap. At this time everything mutates at full speed, like never before.
And in addition, Lacalle himself acknowledged yesterday that the sector has not yet finished recovering that normality so disrupted by the pandemic. Some brands continue to have chip supply issues. But here in this room they barely noticed. "We have almost recovered normality," Lacalle wanted to add. In fact, sales have also increased these days. Hence the visible satisfaction of the president of Automobile Barcelona.
Because, despite everything, these days the event registered 20% more visitors than those counted in the previous edition, that of the year 2021, until adding no more and no less than 360,000. It should be noted that this figure is also well above that registered in 2019, before the pandemic broke out. Because the automotive industry is also adapting to these times of change. And Automobile Barcelona continues to cheerfully encourage sales in the sector.
Just over a third of all visitors came to this year's edition with the intention of buying a vehicle. "And of all of them, 50% are in line with the electric car," explained Enrique Lacalle. 34.9% did so with a hybrid or plug-in hybrid in mind, and 17.1% in one hundred percent electric, while 20.9% favor a gasoline engine.
It is not trivial that the motto of this year's edition is Electrifying. The sector adapts in this way to these hectic times. “We have embarked on a path that is already irreversible, the path to preserve the environment, the path to guarantee sustainability. In this sense, there is no going back."
In addition, Lacalle understands that the simultaneous celebration, from May 11 to 14, also at the Montjuïc fairgrounds, of the MOTOh! contributed in a fundamental way to multiply the number of visitors to this edition. And with a view to the year 2025, the president of Automobile Barcelona assures that the organization is already working to further increase the number of brands.
In this year's edition, visitors were able to find up to 31 manufacturer brands, while in 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, only 22 were represented, a notable increase due, in large part, to the significant presence of Chinese car manufacturers. , who these days showed vehicles "with interesting aesthetics and prices", as Lacalle wanted to underline. "The truth is that Europeans have to wake up," he added. We want to reach the top brands in the next edition of the contest, in 2025, with as many as possible”.
The Automobile Barcelona, which opened its doors to the general public on the 13th, is organized by Fira de Barcelona with the support of the Spanish Association of Automobile Manufacturers (Anfac). This show is the only one in Spain that has the international recognition of the Organization Internationale des Constructeurs d'Automobiles (OICA).
