Date: February 1st, 2023

Fuel types of new cars in EU 2022 – first time more alternatives drives than combustion drives

Summary

First time that APVs surpass traditional petrol and diesel fuel-types

In 2022, registrations of new battery electric vehicles (BEVs) continued to grow, despite the overall decline of the EU car market. As a result, market share of BEVs expanded to 12.1%, a 3% improvement compared to 2021. It was a strong year also for hybrid cars, which achieved a market share of 22.6%. By contrast, traditional petrol and diesel fuel-types continued to lose ground. However, combined, they still accounted for more than half of EU car sales in 2022.

BEVs
From October to December, EU registrations of new BEVs expanded by 31.6% to 406,890 units, as most of the region’s markets recorded growth. Germany led the way with 198,293 units and an increase of 66.1%, followed by France which increased by 12.6% to 62,155 units. After a weak third quarter, EU plug-in hybrid car sales saw a strong rise (+29.5%) in the last quarter of 2022, bolstered by a 73.5% increase in Germany, which alone represented more than half of the region’s registrations in this category. This helped the full-year result to move into positive territory, with a 1.2% growth.

Hybrid electric vehicles
HEVs totalled 545,316 units registered in the EU from October to December last year (an increase of 22.2% compared to the same period in 2021), making them the second best-selling fuel type. This led to an overall increase of 8.6% over the full year, and a market share of 22.6%.

NGVs
The EU market for natural gas vehicles (NGVs) witnessed substantial declines during the last three months of 2022 (-56.6%), as sales Italy – the region’s largest market for this fuel type – plunged by 71.3%. LPG-fuelled vehicles, on the other hand, grew by 16.7% from October to December last year.

APVs
Alternatively-powered vehicles accounted for more than a half (53.1%) of the EU car market during the last quarter of the year, with over 1.3 million cars registered in total. On a quarterly basis, this is the first time that APVs surpass traditional petrol and diesel fuel-types.

Petrol and diesel cars
Petrol car sales posted a 4.1% growth during the fourth quarter of 2022. All the four key markets contributed to this improvement, especially Italy (+17.4%) and France (+3.5%). Despite that, petrol’s market share dropped to 32.5%, from 35.5% in the same period in 2021.
By contrast, diesel recorded a slight decline in the last three months of the year (-0.4%), while its market share fell to 14.4%, against 16.4% in the fourth quarter of 2021. As a result, full-year diesel car registrations went down by 19.7% to 1.5 million units, with a market share of 16.4% – 3.1 percentage points less than in 2021.