News and Insights

Fuel Types of New Trucks: Diesel 96.5%, Electric 0.4%, Alternative Fuels 2.9%

In 2020, diesel still dominated EU truck registrations in terms of market share (96.5%), while petrol made up only 0.1% of total demand last year. Electrically-chargeable vehicles (ECV) accounted for 0.4% of all new trucks registered across the European Union; all alternatively-powered vehicles (APV) combined held a market share of 3.4% in 2020.

Diesel and petrol trucks

Overall in 2020, registrations of new diesel trucks in the European Union¹ fell by 25.6% to 225,854 units, with demand weakened by the impact of COVID-19. With the exception of Greece, all EU markets posted double-digit declines in diesel sales last year, including the four major ones: Germany (-25.3%), France (-24.7%), Spain (-21.4%) and Italy (-13.0%). This resulted in an EU-wide market share of 96.4% for diesel, down from 97.5% in 2019.

At the same time, only 210 petrol trucks were registered across the entire EU region in 2020, 95% of which were sold in three countries alone: Germany, Finland and Belgium.

Alternatively-powered vehicles (APV)

Registrations of new electrically-chargeable vehicles (ECV)² in the European Union went from 745 trucks in 2019 to 984 in 2020 (up 32.1%), resulting in a market share of 0.4%. Over 90% of all electric trucks registered across the region were sold in just two markets: Germany (852 units) and the Netherlands (41 units). By contrast, in 10 EU countries not a single electrically-chargeable truck was sold last year.

In 2020, EU demand for hybrid trucks decreased by 41.2% to reach 157 units registered in total. Indeed, hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) accounted for only 0.1% of all medium and heavy commercial vehicles sold in the European Union.

Alternative fuel³ vehicles – 99% of which run on natural gas – accounted for the vast majority of alternatively-powered trucks registered last year. Demand increased by 5.5% to 6,841 units, with the market share expanding from 2.1% in 2019 to 2.9% in 2020. This was mostly driven by strong sales of natural gas trucks in Germany, which is now the biggest EU market for these vehicles.

¹ Data for Bulgaria, Malta and Lithuania not available

² Includes full battery electric vehicles, fuel-cell electric vehicles, extended-range vehicles and plug-in hybrids

³ Includes natural gas, LPG, biofuels and ethanol vehicles

Source: ACEA