After a slump in 2022, car sales in 2023 experienced a robust recovery, with 476,675 new car registrations in Belgium. This marks a 30% annual increase.
Data published by the Mobility and Transport Ministry on Tuesday indicates the best car sales since the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020. 550,000 new car registrations in 2019 plummeted to 366,000 in 2022. This then shot up to 476,675 last year.
Nearly half (48%) of newly registered cars in 2023 were electric, fuelled largely by business vehicle purchases. Plug-in hybrids comprised the largest group (accounting for 21% of all new car registrations), followed by fully electric cars (19.3%) and self-charging hybrids (7.6%). In the previous year, electric cars constituted only a third of the market.
Petrol vehicles held a 42.4% market share last year, whereas diesel vehicles accounted for 8.9%.
BMW was once again the most popular car brand in Belgium, with 50,579 new registrations granting it a 10.6% market share. This was followed by Volkswagen with 9.5%, and Audi and Mercedes, both with 7.4%.
The top-selling models in 2023 were the BMW X1 and the Tesla Model Y, each with nearly 11,500 registrations, followed by the Dacia Sandero with almost 10,500.
The year 2023 also saw 25,359 new motorcycles and mopeds registered, up 2.7% on 2022. This figure is 3.3% higher than the ten-year average.
