European vehicle market statistics, 2018/2019

The European vehicle market statistics pocketbook offers a statistical portrait of passenger car and light commercial vehicle fleets in the European Union, updated annually. The emphasis is on vehicle technologies and emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants. Brief introductions to each chapter note important trends and provide selected comparisons to other large vehicle markets.

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

Selected highlights of the 2018/2019 edition

• In 2017, new car registrations in the EU increased to 15.2 million, the highest level since 2007.
• The SUV market segment showed the strongest growth in sales. About 4.3 million new cars in 2017 were SUVs, which is more than 6 times as many as 15 years before. Sales of small diesel, small gasoline, and medium-sized diesel vehicles – all with comparatively low CO₂ emission values – lost more than 9 percentage points from 2015 to 2017.
• The vast majority of Europe’s new cars remain powered by gasoline or diesel motors. The market share of hybrid-electric vehicles in the EU was 2.7 % of all new car sales in 2017.
• The share of diesel cars dropped notably in 2017; from 49 % in 2016 to 44 % in 2017. This is significantly less than in 2011–2012, when 55 % of new cars were still powered by diesel.
• In 2017, plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles made up about 1.4 % of vehicle registrations in the EU, a slight increase compared to the previous year.
• Average CO₂ emissions from new passenger cars, as measured via the type-approval test procedure, increased to 119 g/km in 2017, which is 1 g/km higher than in the previous year.
• On average, a new car in 2017 emitted about 42 % more CO₂ under everyday driving conditions than advertised by vehicle manufacturers, up from a gap of 9% in 2001.

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