Abstract:

Key highlights of the report are the SUV market segment showed the strongest growth in sales. About 4.3 million new cars in 2017 were SUVs, which is more than 6 times as many as 15 years before. Sales of small diesel, small gasoline, and medium-sized diesel vehicles – all with comparatively low CO2 emission values – lost more than 9 percentage points from 2015 to 2017. The vast majority of Europe’s new cars remain powered by gasoline or diesel motors. The market share of hybrid-electric vehicles in the EU was 2.7 % of all new car sales in 2017. The share of diesel cars dropped notably in 2017; from 49 % in 2016 to 44 % in 2017. This is significantly less than in 2011–2012, when 55 % of new cars were still powered by diesel. In 2017, plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles made up about 1.4 % of vehicle registrations in the EU, a slight increase compared to the previous year. Average CO2 emissions from new passenger cars, as measured via the type-approval test procedure, increased to 119 g/km in 2017, which is 1 g/km higher than in the previous year.