Passenger Car Registrations Increased in January
After a registration increase of 6.1 percent in 2024, car dealers hit the turbo in January. New registrations increased by 16.5 percent to 20,448 new cars at the beginning of 2025. "This marked the best start to the year for new car registrations since 2020," according to Statistics Austria. Over half of the new cars had alternative drives, with the registration increase in this segment at 29.9 percent. The increase was particularly strong for pure electric cars (35.4 percent).
27.7 Percent Petrol Hybrid Cars
Of all the cars newly registered for traffic, purely electric vehicles reached a share of 18.7 percent in January 2025, petrol hybrid cars 27.7 percent, and diesel hybrid cars 6.8 percent. Across all drives, Austria remains firmly in the hands of the VW Group. Leading is the core brand VW with a 14.4 percent market share, followed by its subsidiaries Skoda and Audi. BMW landed in fourth place for new registrations in January. Hyundai showed the strongest growth.
According to the VCÖ, Austria still has some catching up to do in electromobility. It reminds that in Norway, 96 percent of new cars were electric in January, while in the EU leader Denmark, it was still 64 percent. "Compared to petrol and diesel cars, electric cars require on average two-thirds less energy, cause more than half less CO2 in their overall balance, and reduce Austria's dependence on expensive crude oil imports," the VCÖ appeals to politics to accelerate the energy transition in cars.
A look at the time series shows that new registrations of electric cars are only slowly going uphill - or it is a wave valley. In the entire year of 2024, only 17.6 percent of newly registered cars were pure electric, compared to 19.9 percent the year before. In 2022, 15.9 percent were recorded, and in 2021 it was 13.9 percent. This was at least a significant increase compared to 2020, where only 6.4 percent of all cars were powered solely by electricity. In 2019, only 2.8 percent of new registrations were electric cars.
Over 24,000 Vehicles Newly Registered
In total, 24,818 vehicles were newly registered, an increase of 11.4 percent. In commercial vehicles, more new registrations were recorded for tractor units (plus 15.1 percent), while the smallest class - the classic parcel delivery minibuses - decreased by 2.6 percent. The tractor market was significantly declining (minus 15.4 percent). Bikers were strongly on the brakes. Compared to January 2024, there was a 43.4 percent decrease in newly registered motorcycles.
(APA/Red)
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