A total of 688,114 new vehicles and 910,834 used ones were registered in Belgium last year, according to the national statistical office, Statbel.
Compared to 2018, new-vehicle registrations increased by 0.7% while used-vehicle registrations went down by 0.9%.
However, the number of vehicles fully or partly powered by electricity increased by 15,383 units to 43,905, representing a market share of 7.9%, according to Statbel.
The increase in registrations of new electric cars was even higher. They more than doubled, shooting up from 3,763 in 2018 to 8,892 in 2019, although they still represented a tiny fraction, 1.6%, of the market.
Registrations of hybrid vehicles also went up sharply, for both diesel/electric and gas/electric combinations, increasing by 41.4%. The 35,010 hybrid cars represented 6.3% of the market last year.
Eight out of 10 new vehicles are privately owned. New private car registrations went up by just 0.1% in 2019, whereas they had increased by 0.7% the previous year.
Since 2017, the most popular new cars have been gasoline-powered ones, which account for 60% of the market. However, the increase in registrations of such vehicles slowed down from 22% in 2018 to just 4% in 2019.
Meanwhile diesel-vehicle registrations continued to decrease, dropping by 14% last year.
The Brussels Times
