European car sales: 6.7 percent growth, electric again above average

There were 885,580 new passenger cars registered in the European Union in November, reports trade organization ACEA. This means a growth of 6.7 percent compared to last year. Although this is an increase, it is the smallest so far this year. The top month remains March, when sales grew by no less than 28.8 percent compared to a year earlier. Things also went fast in August, with a plus of 21 percent. These major steps were largely due to caught up deliveries, because the chip shortage was still affecting the automotive industry in 2022.

In the Netherlands, as we reported at the beginning of this month, there was much more modest growth than the aforementioned 6.7 percent. The Bovag and the Rai Association only recorded a plus of 1.8 percent in our country. This puts us well below the EU average and in particular countries such as Italy (+16.2 percent in November) and France (+14 percent). On the other hand, we are doing ‘better’ than Germany, where the number of newly registered cars fell by 5.7 percent last month compared to November 2022.

Electrical pluses and minuses

By definition, Germany is an interesting market in these new figures, because the number of registrations of electric cars fell sharply there last month. The number of EV registrations increased by as much as 22.5 percent compared to November last year. While there was still subsidy from the government, which has now disappeared. Germany is not exemplary for how things are going in the EU-wide with the sale of electric cars. Across the EU, EV registrations increased by 16.4 percent in November. However, this is smaller growth than at the beginning of this year, when it was still tens of percent. Viewed over the entire year up to and including November, sales growth for fully electric cars is still a significant 48.2 percent, partly due to those months.

Electric cars accounted for a 16.3 percent market share in the European Union in November, just over one percent more than last year. Hybrid cars without a plug were well above this with a 27.4 percent share. The share of petrol cars grew by 4.5 percent, reaching 32.7 percent. In contrast, the share of diesel cars shrank by 2.3 percent to 12.2 percent.

In the Netherlands, electric cars made up the lion’s share of registrations last month. 33.9 percent of new passenger cars were fully electric according to the ACEA. This was followed by petrol cars, with a 27 percent share, closely followed by hybrid cars without a plug with 26 percent. Plug-in hybrids amounted to 11.2 percent and only 1 percent of new cars here were with only a diesel engine.