A total of 938,950 new passenger cars were sold in the EU in May, a year-on-year increase of 18.5% that has been driven by both electric cars and, to a greater degree, petrol cars.
For the tenth year running, the number of new vehicle registrations in the EU grew, figures published on Wednesday by the automobile manufacturers’ umbrella organisation Acea show. From January to May, around 4.4 million new passenger cars were sold.
The market share of electric cars rose to 13.8% (up from 9.6% in May 2022) and sales increased 70.9% with almost 130,000 sold over the past year.
However, despite frequent efforts both political and commercial efforts to persuade consumers of the environmental virtues of electric cars, petrol cars remain the most popular new vehicle in Europe, making up 36.5% of market share and seeing sales rise 12.6% to nearly 343,000 units.
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Hybrid cars are also gaining ground and are now the second-most sold, making up 25% of market share and selling nearly 235,000 units. But sales of plug-in hybrids fell in May by 0.6%, largely due to the massive decrease in sales in Germany (-40.5%) after the country ended tax incentives at the end of 2022.
In Belgium, nearly 41,360 new passenger cars were registered in May, up more than 42% on a one-year basis.
