’20 percent more new cars in the Netherlands this year’

The international car market has collapsed considerably in recent years, partly as a result of the corona pandemic and the resulting delays and other obstacles in the supply chain. In 2022, 312,129 new cars will be registered in the Netherlands. That sounds like a huge number of cars, but in the big picture there were very few. In fact, the Dutch car market reached an all-time low last year. 2022 was the year with the smallest number of new registrations in 55 years. In the meantime, car manufacturers and importers have been catching up for a while. Earlier this year, Bovag and RAI Association expressed the expectation that some 340,000 new passenger cars will be registered in 2023. ING seems to have a rosier view of the Dutch car market.

ING Research expects that the number of new passenger cars registered in 2023 will reach 375,000 units. ING Research also says that the supply of chips and other components – such as cable harnesses – has now improved. ING does state that electric cars are less popular due to the phasing out of subsidies and ‘fiscal uncertainties’ – such as the disappearance of the MRB exemption for EVs from 2025 – because private individuals are postponing purchases.

From an analysis of the Dutch car fleet, ING Research also concludes that the Dutch car fleet is ageing. The share of cars older than fifteen years old would have risen to 26 percent. Even 30 percent of petrol cars are said to be fifteen years or older. At the beginning of this year, the European trade association European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) already concluded that the average Dutch passenger car in 2021 will be 11.4 years old. This means that passenger cars in the Netherlands are on average older than in other Western European countries. In 2019, an average passenger car in the Netherlands was still 11 years old. Although the number of petrol cars in the Netherlands has fallen to less than 7 million units, cars with a petrol engine still account for 78.5 percent of the Dutch car fleet, according to ING Research.