September 2025: A great increase in sales of new cars in Europe

The growth in new EU car registrations remained positive and stands at 0.9 year-to-date (YTD) in September 2025, which is the third month of growth in a row.

To some extent, this new momentum has been spurred by the introduction of new models, with September registering a good increase of 10 percent. The market share of battery-electric cars remained constant at 16.1% YTD, which is not as fast as the change should be at this point in the transition.

Hybrid-electric cars were still the most favored type of power among consumers.

By September 2025, the battery-electric cars were already 16.1% of the EU market share, which is a rise over the low level of 13.1% in September 2024 YTD. The registration of hybrid-electric vehicles is still on the rise, as it takes 34.7 percent of the market, and it is still the favorite among consumers in the EU. In the meantime, the total share of petrol and diesel cars decreased to 37 percent as compared to 46.8 percent in 2024.

Data origin: the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), which was based on aggregated data on national automobile associations, the members of ACEA, and S&P Global Mobility. The data used this year are provisional and thus, can be revised later.

The 1,300,188 new battery-electric cars in the first nine months of 2025 take a 16.1% share of the EU market. The EU recorded an increase in three of the four largest markets that contributed 62 percent of battery-electric car registrations, namely Germany ( +38.3%), Belgium ( +12.4%), and the Netherlands ( +3.9%). This was unlike in France which recorded a small drop of 0.2% although, once again, the September 2025 YOY rise was 11.2%. The data by September 2025 YTD also revealed that the number of new EU hybrid-electric cars registered increased to 2,793,079 units due to the growth in the four largest markets: France (28.8%), Spain (28.1%), Germany (10.6%), and Italy (9.2%). The hybrid-electric models occupy 34.7 percent of the overall EU market.

Plug-in hybrid electric cars are still increasing, with 722,914 vehicles being registered in the same year. This was propelled by growth in volume of major markets like Spain (105.2), Germany (63.9), and Italy (72.6). This has seen plug-in hybrid electric cars constitute 9 percent of EU car registrations, compared to 6.9 percent a year ago.

Battery-electric cars and hybrid-electric cars increased by 20 percent and 15.9 percent, respectively, and plug-in-hybrid cars had their seventh month of strong year-over-year results with a 65.4 percent increase.

The petrol car registrations had gone down by 18.7 by the end of September 2025, and all the major markets had gone down. The sharpest decline was found in France, where registrations declined by 32.8 percent, then Germany (-23.5), Italy (-16.6), and Spain (-13.2). The petrol market share declined to 27.7% compared to 34.4% in the same year last year, with 2,234,058 new cars registered already. Equally, the diesel automobile market fell 24.7 percent to leave September 2025 YTD with a 9.3 percent share. Moreover, the September 2025 YOY change was a decrease in petrol of 7.8% and diesel of 14.3% as well.

The Volkswagen Group is ranked first on the list of manufacturers at the moment, with its 317,432 new automobiles sold in September (an increase of 9.7) and 2,654,576 automobiles sold during the first nine months (an increase of 4.4).

Stellantis is placed at the second rank with the new car sales of 165,457 in September, which is an improvement of 11.5, and 1,464,419 in the last nine months, but the decrease is 5.6.

The Renault Group sold 115,830 new automobiles in the month of September, and this represents an increase of 15.2 percent compared to the month before. As well, 1,003,085 new cars were sold over the duration of the last nine months, which is an increase of 6.9% as well.

The most successful manufacturers are listed below: