Report

European vehicle market statistics, 2019/2020

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 2019/2020 edition:

  • In 2018, new car registrations in the EU remained roughly constant at 15.1 million. By far the strongest growth in vehicle sales took place in the sport utility vehicle (SUV) segment. Approximately 5 million new cars in 2018 were SUVs, more than 8 times as many as in 2001.
  • The share of diesel cars sold in the EU dropped considerably from 44 % in 2017 to 36% in 2018. This is significantly less than in 2011-2012, when 55% of new cars were still powered by diesel.
  • The official level of average carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from new passenger cars in the EU, increased to 120 grams per kilometer (g/km) in 2018, which is 2 g/km higher than in the previous year.
  • The market share of hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) in the EU was 3 % of all new car sales in 2018. Plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and battery electric vehicles (BEV) each made up about 1% of new vehicle registrations in the EU.