Diesel car market share in Western Europe falls to 15%

author: FutureCar Staff    

Diesel share of new car sales in Western Europe experienced a slight decline in August. This was primarily influenced by a strong result in Germany for battery electric vehicles (BEVs), as subsidies for company BEVs were set to be removed on September 1, 2023. As a result, there was a surge in BEV registrations in August, leading to a decrease in sales of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, including diesel. GlobalData suggests that if not for this factor, the diesel car share in Germany for August would have been 4-5 percentage points higher than it turned out to be.

Overall, the provisional diesel share for the region, including hybrids, in August was 15.0%, with a few smaller markets yet to report their numbers. The year-to-date diesel share for 2023 currently stands at 16.5%, which is a slight decrease of 0.2 percentage points compared to the July figure. In August alone, 120,000 diesel cars were sold, contributing to a total of 1.265 million units sold over the first eight months of the year. These figures are virtually unchanged from the sales during the same period in 2022.

Despite the distorted figures in Germany for August, both Germany and Italy have seen larger diesel markets in 2023 compared to 2022. The only significant decline was observed in France, where diesel sales are down by nearly 50,000 units year-to-date. However, this decrease is offset by a similar-sized increase in Germany and an almost 40,000 unit rise in Italy. The recovery from a weak base in 2022 is a contributing factor to these trends, but the overall trend in diesel share remains negative.

FutureCar Staff