Report

European vehicle market statistics, 2015/2016

A new edition of the pocketbook is available here.


The annual European Vehicle Market Statistics Pocketbook offers a statistical portrait of passenger car and light-commercial vehicle fleets in the European Union from 2001—and, beginning with the 2014 edition, of the heavy-duty fleet as well. The emphasis is on vehicle technologies, fuel consumption, and emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants.

See the EU Pocketbook online, eupocketbook.theicct.org, for interactive charts and underlying data.

Selected highlights of the 2015/2016 edition

  • New passenger car registrations in the EU increased slightly to about 12.5 million in 2014, though they remain about 20% below the level before the economic crisis.
  • Average CO2 emissions from new passenger cars continued to decrease, falling in 2014 to 123.3 g/km.
  • Diesel cars account for 53% of all new registrations in 2014.
  • Overall, hybrid-electric vehicles were 1.4% of new car sales in 2014, but in some Member States their market share was significantly higher—3.7% in the Netherlands, for example, and 2.3% in France.
  • Plug-in hybrids and battery-electric vehicles accounted for 13.8 % of all new car sales in Norway in 2014, and in the first quarter of 2015 their market share further increased to 22.9 %. This makes Norway the world leader for electric vehicles in terms of market share.
  • Since September 2015 the Euro 6 emission standard has applied to all new vehicles in the EU. In 2014, about 17 % of all new car sales were Euro 6 vehicles, though the variation among manufacturers is wide: for some manufacturers as much as half of sales are Euro 6–compliant vehicles, while others have as yet no significant Euro 6 fleet.
  • Euro 6 sets emission limits that range from 68% (gasoline carbon monoxide) to 96% (diesel particulates) lower than those established under Euro 1 in 1992. Limits on nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from diesel cars were reduced by 68% from Euro 4 to Euro 6. But recent analysis indicates that “real-world” NOx emissions are much worse than suggested by the official values.