Business 24 May 2024, 10:30am

New passenger car registrations rise by more than 20% in Hungary in April

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New passenger car registrations rose by more than 21% year on year in Hungary in April 2024, and they were up by 13.7% in the European Union after a 5.2% decline in March, according to the latest report by the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA).

In April 2024, the European Union car market grew by 13.7%, with new registrations totalling 913,995 units, driven by strong increases across all major markets: Spain (+23.1%), Germany (+19.8%), France (+10.9%), and Italy (+7.7%).

In March, the EU new car market experienced its first decline of the year, registering a 5.2% decrease to 1 million units. The timing of the Easter holidays negatively impacted last month’s sales across most EU markets, including the four largest.

The growth in April can be partly explained by the fact that there were two extra sales days compared to the same month last year, when Easter holidays fell in April.

During the first four months of the year, new car registrations in the European Union increased by 6.6%, reaching nearly 3.7 million units. Solid growth was recorded in the region’s largest markets over the period, with Germany and Spain each seeing a 7.8% increase, followed by France (+7%) and Italy (+6.1%).

The chart below shows the number of new passenger car registrations in Central and Eastern Europe in the third month of 2023 and 2024, as well as their yr/yr change. All of the selected countries recorded yr/yr increases in March, with Poland standing out not just in terms of the number of new cars registered but also with a yr/yr growth of over 25%.

New EU car registrations by power source

In April 2024, the share of battery-electric cars in new passenger car registrations was largely unchanged at 13.9% versus 13.8% a year earlier, while hybrid-electrics charged up to 29.1% from 24.9%. The share of plug-in hybrid vehicles shrank to 6.8% from 7.5%.

PETROL (36.0%) AND DIESEL (12.3%) COMBINED CAPTURED LESS THAN HALF THE MARKET (48.9%, FROM 52.8%).

The share of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) in total new passenger car registrations in Hungary remains higher at 45.8% than the combined share of petrol and diesel cars (42.4%).

The number of newly registered petrol cars showed a 7.3% yr/yr rise in the EU, while diesel car registrations were flat, which compare with a respective decline of 10.2% and 18.5% in March. The largest annual growth (33.1%) was observed in the registration of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs).

However, it is clear that there are countries, especially in our region, where electric and hybrid cars are finding it harder to gain a foothold. In Bulgaria, for example, almost 93% of newly registered passenger cars had internal combustion engine in April, but in Slovenia, Czechia, and Croatia this share was 81.9%, 71.1%, and 70.8%, respectively. In comparison, the Nordic countries typically see figures below 30% (18.6% in Finland, 22.9% in the Netherlands and 30.5% in Sweden in April).

Hybrid electric vehicles

Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) are becoming increasingly popular around the world, and this is also true in Europe, where 33.1% of all new cars registered were HEVs in April.

The largest markets for this segment, France (+48.1%), Spain (+38.5%), Germany (+25.9%), and Italy (+22.8%), all recorded double-digit increases, with registrations totalling 265,992 units. This pushed the hybrid-electric market share to 29.1%, up from 24.9% in April 2023.

In Hungary, 45.8% of the newly registered cars were HEVs last month, with only Cyprus and Poland higher in this particular ranking.

HEV sales in Hungary jumped by 41.2% yr/yr to 4,765 cars, which compares with a 33.1% average growth in the EU, up from 12.6% in March. Hungary finished at the bottom of the top third of this ranking, while last month a 43.1% growth was enough for the second place behind Bulgaria, which comparison was futile, though, given that only 90 HEVs were sold there versus over 6,600 in Hungary. The 232% increase in Cyprus marks the registration of 784 HEVs in April.

Battery electric cars

In April 2024, battery-electric car registrations rose by 14.8% to 108,552 units, with their market share holding steady at around 12%. France and Belgium saw significant increases of 45.2% and 41.6%, respectively, while Germany remained stable (-0.2%). From January to April, a total of 441,992 new battery-electric cars were registered, marking a 6.4% increase from the previous year.

The first four months of 2024 ended with a total of 441,9912 new battery-electric cars registered, a 6.4% rise from the same quarter in the previous year.

The countries that were at the bottom of the petrol/diesel ranking above are now at the top. Of the Nordic countries, Denmark (42.9%) has the highest share of electric cars in total sales, but the Netherlands and Sweden now have one in three cars sold that are fully electric.

At the bottom of the list are the countries of our region, with hardly any BEVs sold in Croatia (35) and Slovakia (229) did not excel either. The big markets of Italy and Spain have not caught on to electric cars. In Hungary, 719 BEVs were newly registered in April, a share of 6.9%, down from 1,174 and 9.1% in March.

BEV sales in Hungary soared by nearly 79% yr/ry in April, against a 14.8% growth in the EU. Note that the surge in Cyprus marks the registration of merely 77 purely electric cars.

Norway is often quoted as a prime example of going electric in driving, where the share of EVs in total new registrations remains brutally high. In April, the share was 89.4%, meaning that nine out of ten cars newly registered in Norway were purely electric. Plug-in hybrids represented a mere 1.6% of newly registered cars and the share for hybrid electric vehicles was 4.6% last month. The petrol and diesel shares were 1.2% and 3.2%, respectively.

Plug-in hybrids

In terms of the share of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) of total new car registrations, Sweden came out on top with 26%, followed by Finland and Belgium. Hungary's share in this category was 4.7% in April (vs. 3.8% in March), while the EU average was higher at 6.8% (down from 7.1% in March).

Plug-in hybrid car registrations saw a modest increase of 3.7% last month in the European Union. While Belgium experienced a significant decline of 17.6% and France remained stable (-0.1%), Germany’s strong performance, with a 28.4% increase, helped balance the segment. In April, plug-in hybrids accounted for 6.8% of the total car market, with 62,148 units sold.

Only 488 PHEVs were newly registered in Hungary in April, versus 426 in the same month of 2023. This 14.6% increase comes on the back of a mere 0.8% growth in March.

New passenger car registrations in Hungary by fuel type

A total of 10,402 new passenger cars were registered in Hungary in April this year, 21.4% more than in a year earlier. Most new cars are HEVs (45.8%), followed by petrol (30.1%), diesel (12.3%), BEV (6.9%) and PHEV (4.7%). The evolution of these shares can be seen in the chart below. The race is clearly between HEVs and petrol cars, with the former coming out on top steadily since last July. The share of HEVs was also higher between November 2022 and May 2023.

As for the evolution of the share of the three main power sources (petrol, diesel, HEV) in Hungary's new passenger car registrations take a look at the three graphs below. The diminishing share of petrol engines year by year is evident, despite the fluctuations and an uptick in April this year.

The share of diesel cars in new registrations has been showing greater fluctuation but the decline remains clear, albeit not as sharp by far as in the case of petrol-fuelled cars.

The share of HEVs has never been as high as in March for as long as the date series goes back (Jan2022), but it slumped back to 45.8% in April.

There is also a slow increase in the share of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in new passenger car registrations, with March standing out in the statistics.

No clear trend can be seen at plug-in hybrids, but if we had to pick one it's definitely not an ascending trend - it's rather stagnation at best.

It is worth nothing that the government launched an electric car subsidy scheme earlier this year, which has helped boost EV sales. As the scheme has not yet expired, it is expected to continue to have a positive impact on domestic EV sales for the rest of the year.

Hungary and its regional peers - April

We can and should and do compare Hungary's performance also in regional terms, both in respect of the actual number of cars sold (by fuel type) and the annual change in new registrations. Here we go:

Hungary and its regional peers - January-April

In the first four months of 2024, new passenger car registrations grew by 10.4% in Hungary, including a 46.5% growth in BEV registrations, a 31.2% expansion at HEVs, and a 7.9% increase at PHEVs. Meanwhile, diesel car sales edged up 4.0% and 13.1% fewer petrol-fuelled cars were registered than in April 2023.