CO₂ emissions from new cars and vans continued to decrease in 2023 as zero-emission vehicles registrations continued to grow

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.

Read more:

• EEA news release
• Reducing CO₂ emissions from passenger cars
• Reducing CO₂ emissions from vans
• Reducing CO₂ emissions from light-duty vehicles