According to the provisional data published by the European Environment Agency, the average CO2 emissions of new cars registered in Europe continued to decrease in 2023 and were 1.4% below 2022 levels, bringing them to 28% below 2019 levels. For vans too, the downward trend continued as average 2023 emissions fell to 11% below 2019 levels.
These trends are the result of the increase in registrations of battery electric vehicles, which reached market shares of 15.5% for cars and 8% for vans.
In 2023, 10.7 million new passenger cars were registered in the EU, Iceland and Norway. The provisional data shows that their average carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions during laboratory testing were 106.6 g CO2/km, which is 1.4% (1.5 g/km) below the average emissions in 2022 and 28% below 2019 levels.
The main reason for this decrease was the further surge in the number of fully electric cars registered, reaching a share of 15.5% up from 13.5% in 2022.
The average mass of new cars has been increasing and in 2023 was 9% higher than in 2019, due to the increasing market share of battery electric vehicles and electric and conventional SUVs.
The average CO2 emissions of the 1.2 million new vans registered in the EU, Iceland and Norway in 2023 were 180.8 g CO2/km, which is 1.6% (3 g/km) below 2022 levels and an overall 11% reduction since 2019. Steady progress was made in the electrification of vans, with the market share of fully electric vans increasing to 8% from 6% in 2022.The Commission will notify all car and van manufacturers of these provisional calculations and the underlying data. In line with Regulation (EU) 2019/631, manufacturers will have three months to review this provisional data and signal any factual errors, so final datasets can be published.
While significant progress has been made in the past 4 years, it is crucial for manufacturers to continue accelerating the emission reductions from these vehicles to deliver on the future targets set out in the revised CO2 emission performance standards for cars and vans, in view of the EU’s 2050 climate-neutrality objective.
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