6.7 percent growth and electric weather

885,580 new passenger cars were registered in the European Union in November, trade association ACEA reports. This means a growth of 6.7 percent compared to last year. Although this is an increase, it is the lowest so far this year. The top month remains March, where sales grew by at least 28.8 percent compared to the previous year. Things also moved quickly in August, with a 21 percent increase. These major steps were largely due to delayed deliveries, as the chip shortage was still impacting the auto industry in 2022.

In the Netherlands, as we reported at the beginning of this month, there was much more modest growth than the 6.7 percent mentioned above. Bovag and Rai recorded an increase of only 1.8 percent in our country. This puts us well below the EU average, particularly in countries like Italy (+16.2% in November) and France (+14%). On the other hand, we are in a better position than Germany, where the number of newly registered cars decreased by 5.7 percent last month compared to November 2022.

Electrical pros and cons

By definition, Germany is an interesting market in these new numbers, because the number of electric car registrations there fell sharply last month. The number of electric vehicle registrations increased by up to 22.5 percent compared to November last year. While there was still support from the government, which has now disappeared. Germany is not ideal for how things work at the EU level when it comes to selling electric cars. Across the European Union, electric vehicle registrations increased by 16.4 percent in November. However, this is lower growth than at the beginning of this year, when it was still tens of percent. Considering all-electric vehicle sales growth over the entire year up to and including November, it’s still a significant growth rate of 48.2 percent, partly due to those months.

Electric cars accounted for a 16.3 percent market share in the European Union in November, an increase of just over one percent from last year. Hybrid cars without plugs were much higher at 27.4 percent. The share of gasoline-powered cars increased by 4.5% to 32.7%. In contrast, the share of diesel cars decreased by 2.3% to 12.2%.

In the Netherlands, electric cars accounted for the lion’s share of registrations last month. 33.9 percent of new passenger cars were fully electric according to ACEA. This was followed by gasoline-powered cars at 27 percent, followed closely by plug-in hybrid cars at 26 percent. Plug-in hybrids accounted for 11.2 percent, and only 1 percent of new cars here were equipped with a diesel engine only.