Nearly all commercial vehicles still run on diesel in the EU. Latest data on vehicles used in the EU are public.

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The European Automobile Manufacturers Association has published its annual report about the vehicles being used in Europe in 2019. The average number of trucks increased by 2,3%, while that of vans grew by 2,7% in the last 5 years. Nearly all of the commercial vehicles run on diesel.

According to the data presented by the association, there are 6.6 million trucks on the EU’s roads. It doesn’t come as a surprise that with more than 1.1 million trucks, Poland has the largest truck fleet, followed closely by Germany (946,541) and Italy (904,308). While Romania, Lithuania or Slovenia is not in the top 5 of this list, it is worth mentioning that the growth of the number of trucks in these countries was significant in the last year – 9,7% in Romania, 7,4% in Lithuania and 6,8% in Slovenia.

Source of data: ACEA

Regarding vans, the report counts 33.2 million vans in use in the European Union. Counting more than 6.2 million vehicles, France has by far the largest van fleet, followed by Spain (4.6 million), the United Kingdom (4.4 million vans) and Italy (4.2 million). 

As for buses, there are around 770,000 buses in operation throughout the European Union, 30% of which is found in two countries alone: Poland and Italy.

Age of the vehicles

The average age of light commercial vehicles in the EU is 10.9 years. With almost 19 years, Greek vans are the oldest ones. 

As for trucks, the average lorry is 12.4 years old in the European Union. Among the EU’s five major markets, Spain has the oldest truck fleet (14.4 years), followed closely by Italy (14.0 years). 

Source of data: ACEA

The average age of EU buses is 11.4 years momentarily. The oldest buses can are in Greece (20.4 years) and the youngest ones in Austria (5.4 years).

Fuel usage

While the EU guidelines about CO2 emissions are getting stricter and stricter, almost all of the commercial vehicles are diesel-fuelled. More than 91% of the EU van fleet runs on diesel, and 98.3% of all trucks in the EU run on diesel, while petrol fuels only 1%.

Source of data: ACEA

Photo: Anilsyal/ Wikimedia Commons

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