Audi's view of the year ahead for fleet sales:

"We expect the total fleet market to be slightly ahead of 2009. Many vehicles in 2009 were extended – these now need replacing in 2010.

"RVs have also improved to the extent that many companies and contract hire and leasing companies without significant losses that were experienced in early 2009.

"Additionally access to money for the contract hire and leasing industry will improve offering more scope for funding fleets.

"Within Audi we plan the same fleet volume for 2010 as per 2009. This will slightly reduce our fleet market penetration.

"We believe that the Audi centre network will be much more focused on the retail market in 2010 as it delivers stronger margin opportunities.

Contract hire and leasing orders (the vast majority of Audi fleet business) are currently ahead of the same period in 2008 with almost 25% of our planned 2010 contract hire volume on order and strong incoming fleet orders.

"We have only recently released details of our Q1 product offers and we expect a continued growth in orders based on the driver appeal of the strong product offers.

"We see most opportunity within both contract hire and leasing and end-user fleets – historically strong sales channels for Audi – demand that is driven by the driver populations keen to drive Audi cars. This is now particularly true with the new range of fuel and tax efficient cars in the Audi range.

"However as some of the key contract hire and leasing companies move away from the broker channel then it is clear that we will experience some downturn.

"However this is offset by the 90+ local business development managers in the Audi dealer network selling to their local business community

"However we see that there will be real growth in the rental market with the volume brands now seeing a better opportunity for short cycle business. Audi rental volume (all on buy-back agreements) in 2010 will remain at below 3% of our total volume.

"We see real risk in the SME sector as these businesses face most issues around cash next year. Large corporate customers are where we see most growth potential next year.

"Three-year contracts are still the norm. During 2009 we did see a move to four years as customers looked to reduce costs and the contract hire companies were keen to extend existing contracts whilst the used car market was so depressed and access to new funds was a real issue .

"However we are still seeing the majority of our end users stick with three-year contracts primarily due to concerns around such factors as corporate image, driver dissatisfaction and increased costs for service and maintenance due to expiry of warranty.

"In some cases the contract hire and leasing companies were incentivising customers to extend by reducing rentals. This has almost completely gone away. The used market has recovered. Funding is not so big an issue. So the increase in SMR costs makes extending much less attractive."