Diesel share of new car sales in Western Europe lost a little momentum in August, influenced by a very strong BEV result in Germany that was spurred on by the removal of subsidies for company BEVs from 1 September 2023. This resulted in a pull-forward of BEV registrations to August (non-private sales account for 60% of total German BEV sales) and a commensurate dip in ICE car sales, including diesel. If it were not for that, GlobalData says it would have expected Germany diesel car share in August to be 4pp or 5pp stronger than they turned out.

The provisional August diesel share for the region, including hybrids, came in at 15.0% with a few smaller markets yet to report. To date in 2023, diesel share is at 16.5%, a fall of 0.2pp from the YTD July number. 120k diesel cars were sold in August, with the 8-month total at 1.265 million units, which is virtually unchanged from sales over the same period in 2022.

Despite Germany’s distorted August, it (and Italy) have seen bigger diesel markets so far in 2023 than in 2022. The only significant faller was France where, YTD, diesel sales are down by almost 50k units. This is offset by a similar-sized rise in Germany and an almost 40k increase in Italy. Underlying recovery from a weak base in 2022 is a factor, and the trend in diesel share remains a negative one.