While not a significant fall over January’s position, February’s diesel share of new car sales in Western Europe fell close to the lowest post-peak level, seen in September 2024. With just two smaller markets yet to report at the time of writing, we can be reasonably confident that the 12.0% we indicate for February won’t be revised by much, if at all.
From a year-on-year perspective, the decline was the largest seen for some time. In fact, one has to look back as far as August 2023 to see a bigger annualised decline in diesel share. One explanation is the positive start (compared with 2024) to the region’s BEV market that is pushing down demand for combustion-engine vehicles, diesel included.
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Volume-wise, 32,000 fewer diesel cars were sold in the region in February 2025 than a year earlier, while across the first two months of the year the market for diesel cars was 63,000 units smaller. Germany, while still Europe’s biggest diesel car market by a distance, contributed one third of the year-to-date shortfall compared with a year earlier. Non-plug-in car taxes are typically rising faster than those for plug-ins, on CO2 grounds, but in general these are fuel type agnostic meaning that gasoline cars are also seeing acquisition and circulation taxes increasing. However, some larger-engine diesel cars in some markets are being impacted by particularly big tax increases. But sales volumes for those cars tend to be rather low – most diesel car sales fall into the 2.0L engine size category or smaller.
This article was first published on GlobalData’s dedicated research platform, the Automotive Intelligence Center.
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