So few new car registrations as last 43 years ago

Compared to the pre-crisis year of 2019, new car sales fell by more than a third. The average CO2 emissions of the new cars were 134 g/km. A total of 305,332 vehicles were newly registered in the previous year, 17.8 percent fewer than in 2021 and 30 percent fewer than in 2019.

Compared to the pre-crisis year 2019, there was a minus of 61.9 percent for diesel and 55.5 percent for petrol engines. In the case of purely electric cars, on the other hand, there was an increase of 269.7 percent – although the absolute numbers still show their niche existence: in 2022 only 34,165 e-cars were newly registered.

Of all new passenger car registrations in 2022, 66 percent were accounted for by legal entities, companies and local authorities and 34 percent by private owners. VW remained the market leader with a 14.9 percent share of new cars, ahead of Group subsidiary Skoda (8.7 percent) and BMW (7.6 percent).

More semitrailer tractors (3,232 units, up 10.5 percent) were newly registered on the commercial vehicle market in 2022. There were significant declines in tractor registrations (minus 14.4 percent) and also for two-wheelers (minus 2.4 percent).

Plus for high-horsepower cars

With new cars, the trend towards high-horsepower vehicles has continued. In the class up to 54 hp there was a minus of 55 percent, in the models up to 82 hp it was 28.9 and up to 105 hp 11.8 percent. On the other hand, there was an increase of one percent for cars with more than 171 hp.

The boom in city SUVs continued in 2022. While the market as a whole fell by 10.3 percent, the drop for SUVs was only 0.8 percent. At minus 1.6 percent, the decline in the upper middle class was also very moderate. Minivans, however, lost 24.7 percent.

Looking at the car brands, Opel’s strong minus (37.2 percent) is striking. The Renault brand Dacia drove a significant plus (15.4 percent), with the discount provider leaving behind the e-car pioneer Tesla with plus 15.1 percent. The most popular car was the Skoda Octavia, although it lost a lot of feathers. The Toyota Yaris came in second and the Tesla Model Y took third place. The long-running VW Golf came in fourth, ahead of the cheapest car on the market, the Dacia Sandero.

A side note: At the end of 2022 there were 5.15 million cars in Austria, almost 500,000 vans and almost the same number of tractors. The number of motorcycles was slightly higher at 593,000. And from Lake Neusiedl to Lake Constance, 36,000 mobile homes have been registered.

What is also noticeable in the annual statistics for 2022: the number of short-term registrations fell drastically. In the case of 1-day registrations, the minus was 31 percent. In the case of used cars, there was a minus of 13.8 percent compared to 2021.