The number of cars registered in January and February fell by 1.2% compared with the same period last year, according to the monthly report published on Tuesday by the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA).
A total of 865,437 vehicles were registered last February across the 27 EU Member States, bringing the total number of registrations for the first two months of the year to 1.664 million.
The decline is more pronounced in Belgium, notes ACEA. With 37,075 vehicles registered in February, the year-on-year drop stands at 7.7%. Since January, this decline has even reached 13.2%.
However, the organisation reports an increase in registrations for the month of February alone, up 1.4% year-on-year.
Electric vehicles continue to make their mark on European roads, with 18.8% of registrations involving this type of powertrain during the first two months of the year – 3.6 percentage points higher than in January and February 2025.
Conversely, the share of internal combustion engines (petrol or diesel) fell from 38.7% to 30.6% over the course of a year.
It was mainly in France (a 38.5% increase in registrations year-on-year in January and February) and Germany (a 26.3% increase) that electric vehicles gained ground, while Belgium (a 11% decrease) and the Netherlands (a 34.9% decrease) saw the share of these vehicles decline.
The Volkswagen Group (VW, Skoda, Audi, Cupra, etc.) remained the most popular in February with a 26.6% market share of new cars on the road, ahead of Stellantis (Peugeot, Fiat, Citroën, etc.) at 18.3%, an increase of 1.4 percentage points year-on-year, and the Renault Group (9.9%), down 2 percentage points compared to February 2025.
