Filenews 4 August 2025 - by Theano Thiopoulou
The age of the cars circulating on Cypriot and other European roads is increasing, if hybrids, electric cars that run only on battery, gasoline are some of the data provided by the Eurostat survey.
Consumer preferences on whether a new passenger car should be powered by petrol, diesel or alternative fuel vary between EU countries.
Among the 27 EU countries, only Denmark recorded a higher number of alternative energy cars. Gasoline (including hybrids) is the main source of propulsion energy everywhere.
In 11 EU countries, the number of new registered alternative energy cars exceeded that of diesel cars (Belgium, Denmark, France, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Finland, Sweden).
Among the EU countries with the highest rates of passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants, Italy leads the list (701 passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants) followed by Luxembourg (670 cars per 1,000 inhabitants). Other countries with a high percentage are Finland (667 cars), Cyprus (661 cars) and Estonia (635 cars).
We have an old or new fleet of cars in Cyprus. The data show that only 4.63% of cars are up to 2 years old, 8.30% were 2 to 5 years old, 21.52% of cars are 5 to 10 years old, the majority are 42.57% from 10 to 20 years old and 22.99% are over 20 years old.
The shares of "newer" passenger cars (under 2 years old) were higher in Luxembourg (20.2%), Germany (15.0%), Sweden and Belgium (13.7%, 2023 data for Belgium), Ireland (12.8%, 2023 data), Austria (12.6%), the Netherlands (12.6%) and Denmark (10.4%).
In contrast, several other EU countries reported a large share of "old" passenger cars (20 years old or older) in 2024. These countries were Estonia (36.3%), Romania (36.0%), Finland (34.2%), Poland (29.9%, 2023 figures), Portugal (28.7%), Lithuania (27.6%), Hungary (27.2%), Malta (26.9%), Latvia (26.1%) and Spain (25.6%).
In recent years, some countries have offered programs that supported the purchase of new cars with low emissions, while retiring the old cars of their owners.
The overall objective of these programmes was to renew the passenger car fleet with lower-emission cars while stimulating the economy. These programmes had some effect on the age composition of passenger cars in individual countries.
Gasoline engine size
In 14 of the 22 EU countries for which data are available, the share of small petrol engines is higher than the cumulative share of medium and large engines.
In the automotive industry, there is a general tendency to "downsize" engines, i.e. to reduce the engine displacement without reducing the output power, mainly for energy efficiency reasons.
In Malta, in 2024, more than half of passenger cars had small petrol engines (55.1%), followed by the Netherlands with 51.2%. In Cyprus and Finland, medium-sized petrol engines drove 39.0% of passenger cars.
The highest shares of large petrol engines were observed in Estonia (10.9% of all passenger cars), Finland (9.1%) and Luxembourg (9.0%), Liechtenstein (16.5%) and Switzerland (10.7%).
Overall, passenger cars with small engines generally use gasoline as fuel.
There are relatively few passenger cars with small diesel engines in the EU.
Mid-size engines have dominated diesel passenger cars in all EU countries for which data are available.
This was particularly the case for the group of countries with the highest total share of diesel passenger cars (Ireland, Spain, France, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, Austria, Portugal and Romania).
However, for Lithuania and Latvia, which had an even higher proportion of diesel vehicles than the other countries in the group, the share of large engines (> 2,000 cm3) was quite significant (25.7% and 20.9% respectively).
Preferred fuels by country
In 14 of the 24 EU countries for which information is available for 2024, there were more petrol cars than diesel cars (including hybrids), with the share of petrol cars ranging from 85% in the Netherlands to 49% in Italy.
In Cyprus, the share of passenger cars powered by alternative fuels remained low in 2024 at 0.60%, the share of petrol cars was 78.54% and diesel cars 20.66%.
In the other EU countries, diesel cars outnumbered petrol cars, with shares ranging from 66% in Latvia to 49% in Austria and Bulgaria.
Despite efforts across Europe to increase the share of low-emission cars, the share of passenger cars powered by alternative fuels remained low in 2024 in most EU countries.
In 4 of the 24 EU countries for which information is available, passenger cars using alternative energy accounted for less than 2% of the total passenger car fleet.
The EU country with the highest share is Bulgaria, where passenger cars powered by alternative fuels reached 14.4% in 2024 (of which LPG 12.5%).
Other countries with notable shares of passenger cars using alternative fuels are Norway (27.3%), Denmark (12.0%), Sweden (11.2%), Italy (10.6%), Hungary (7.7%), Lithuania, Luxembourg and the Netherlands (all three 7.2%), Belgium (5.9%) and Latvia (5.4%).
