There was further month-on-month decline in the diesel share of new car sales in September but at a year-on-year level, the fall was just two and a half percentage points, which is the least since April of this year. With all but Greece data available at the time of writing, the diesel share for September has dropped to 14.2%, with Germany five percentage points higher than seen in August as the market swung away from battery electric cars and towards combustion/hybrid cars as payback for August’s BEV pull forward (because of September BEV incentive changes) took effect. That resulted in a bigger German diesel market this September than last September, by more than 6,000 units. Germany was the only market to achieve this feat, with all others seeing smaller diesel sales from a YoY perspective. France was the biggest faller, seeing diesel car sales fall by more than 7,000 units.

Overall, 150k diesel cars were sold in the region in September, a fall of 6% from 2022. Year-to-date, Germany’s diesel car is up on the same period in 2022 as is Italy’s (by 56k and 39k respectively) but declines elsewhere, particularly in France, led to a diesel market 13k units smaller to the end of September. Private registrations of diesel cars have been falling as a share, but not significantly.