EV is gaining ground
With the attention that car manufacturers are drawing to their new electric models, it seems as if the Dutch car landscape also consists almost entirely of electric cars. Nothing is less true. For example, 70 percent of the new passenger cars registered in the Netherlands this year still have a combustion engine. This is evident from figures that AutoWeek requested from Bovag.
The first three quarters of 2023 are behind us and so we have a good reason to take a closer look at what the Dutch car market will look like this year. We already wrote about the electric cars of which the most units have been registered so far this year and we could also tell you which car models – regardless of the drivetrain – have had the most registrations this year. In this article we take a closer look at the fuel mix.
Hybrids still easily beat EVs in the registration figures.
Of the 286,781 new passenger cars registered in the first three quarters of this year, 84,987 had a fully electric powertrain. This means that EVs have a market share of 29.63 percent so far this year. Is the market share of EVs growing? It looks like that. After all, in 2022 as a whole, 23.5 percent of all registered new passenger cars still had an electric drivetrain. Are cars with electric powertrains now the most popular? No, definitely not.
The fact that 29.6 percent of the new passenger cars registered this year were EVs also means that 70.4 percent were not EVs and therefore simply had a combustion engine. 90,863 new cars registered this year had a (mild-hybrid) petrol engine. This meant that ‘conventional’ petrol cars still accounted for a 31.7 percent share of the total number of registered cars. In addition, no fewer than 106,154 passenger cars with a (plug-in) hybrid powertrain were registered this year. Hybrids therefore account for a market share of no less than 37 percent. The number of cars with a hybrid diesel engine will be negligible.
The diesel car has been in decline in the Netherlands for years and the diesel market now appears to have almost completely collapsed. In the first nine months of this year, only 3,179 cars with a (mild-hybrid) diesel engine were registered. That is only 1.1 percent of the total. The market for cars with a petrol engine that also uses LPG is quite small due to the limited supply. Yet this year, 1,553 cars (0.54 percent) were registered that run on LPG. We expect Dacia’s share in this to be enormous. Furthermore, 6 cars have been registered that run on CNG and a total of 39 (0.01 percent) cars with a fuel cell on board.
Distribution of powertrains for new cars (Q1-Q3 2023)
| Powertrain/fuel | Number | Market share | |
| 1 | (Plug-in) Hybrid | 106,154 | 37.02% |
| 2 | Petrol | 90,863 | 31.68% |
| 3 | EV | 84,987 | 29.63% |
| 4 | Diesel | 3,179 | 1.11% |
| 5 | LPG | 1,553 | 0.54% |
| 6 | Hydrogen | 39 | 0.01% |
| 7 | CNG | 6 | 0.00% |
| Total | 286,781 | 100% |
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl