New car registrations in Belux down 8.9% in December, -6% in 2024

According to Febiac and the federal government service Mobility &  Transport data, 23,437 new cars were registered in Belgium and Luxembourg in December. That’s 8,9% less than last year. The cumulated registrations for 2024 resulted in 448,277 cars, and that’s 6.0% less than in 2023, when 476,675 units were registered.

Other noticeable facts: the ratio of company cars to individual buyers was at a more normal 62%/38% again, more balanced than last year when we had a 69%/31% proportion.

Even more importantly, the market share of electrified cars (BEVs, PHEVs, HEVs, and FCEVs) rose to an unprecedented 52.7% (48.4% last year), while the share of pure electric cars (BEVs and FCEVs) rose to 28.5%, making fully electric vehicles the second largest category after gasoline cars (41.7%).

Light commercial vehicles (LCVs) performed a strong final sprint with a 30.3% plus in December, resulting in a slight 2.6% regress for the whole year of 2024. Heavier vehicles booked mixed results.

Trucks under 16 tons didn’t sell well in December (-29.5%), but sales grew by 14.1%. The demand for the above 16 tons was less than last year, with -14.4% in December and -10.7% for the year.

Two-wheelers performed a scorching sprint to the new year, with registrations being 181% higher than last year, resulting in a +11.7% cumulated over 2024. The reason is apparent now (1st of January 2025): motorized two-wheelers must correspond to the Euro 5+ standard, so the remaining Euro 5 bikes had to be sold last year.

By brand

In December, the sales of Belgium’s absolute number one, BMW, slumped by at least 45.6%. The result was that the brand fell back to third position for the last month of 2024, surpassed by Volkswagen (+11.8% in registrations) and an amazing Dacia (+53.6%). Fourth in the ranking is Dacia’s mother, Renault (+54.2%), followed by Peugeot, finally, with some better news augmenting registrations by 67.1%.

Tesla was in sixth position (+9.1%), Audi seventh (-29.9%), Mercedes eighth (-18.9%), Toyota ninth (-14,8%), and an amazing Skoda jumped into tenth place, increasing its sales in December by 95.7%.

Other winners were Citroën (13th,+30.8%), Porsche (19th, +162.7%), BYD (21st, +295.9%), Fiat (22nd, +39.1%), Lexus (30th, +85.7%), Lotus (31st, +200%), and XPeng (33rd), selling 49 cars in December 2024 instead of 1 in 2023.

It was a far better month for some Stellantis brands, apparently, but there were still losers within the group:  Opel (16th, -7.5 %) limited the damage, but Alfa Romeo (35th, -37%) and DS (37th, -36.8%) went further down the slope. The latter didn’t sell more cars than the newcomer from the same house, Lancia, which also sold 24 cars in December.

Other noticeable losers in December were Volvo (15th, -62.1%), Nissan (18th, -23.1%), Mazda (23rd, -56.3%), Suzuki ’24th, -24.4%), Land Rover (25th, -29.8%), Seat (26th, -68.5%), Cupra 27th, -58,1%), MG (28th, -88,4%), and Honda (32nd, -67.1%).

Cumulated

Looking at the full year 2024, BMW is the unmistakable leader of the Belux market with an 11.3% market share (although sales diminished by 0.3%), followed by Volkswagen (9.4% market share). Audi is in third place (7.3% share), followed by Mercedes (7.1%) and the amazing Dacia (5.5% of the market).

Volvo (6th) comes just behind with a 5.4% market share, followed by Toyota (7th, 5.3%) and Renault (8th, also 5.3%), which registered just 56 new cars less than the Japanese in a whole year. With its excellent December month, Peugeot grabbed ninth place (4.9%) from Tesla (10th, 4.7%). The big difference is that Tesla grew by 32.3% in 2024, and Peugeot shrank by 25.5%.

Skoda is performing well at place 11 (4.2%), Kia (12th,3.9%) and Hyundai (13th, 2.7%) are defending their positions, Citroën (14th), Ford (15th), and Opel (16th) all stumbled down with registrations falling between 22% and 30%.

The most noticeable facts thereafter are that VW daughters Seat(22nd) and Cupra (26th) aren’t doing well, Polestar (28th) is stagnating, DS (32nd) lost more than half of its market share, and Alfa Romeo (33rd) isn’t doing much better. Jaguar (36th) registered half of last year’s cars (472), and that’s only marginally better than Lotus (38th, 414 cars).

Finally, in China, BYD is the big winner, climbing to 27th place with a 0.6% market share and menacing MG (24th) for first place among the Chinese manufacturers. Polestar (28th) stagnates in 2024, Lynk & Co (39th) is rapidly disappearing from the market and the other Chinese brands are still marginal. Overall, the ‘Chinese invasion’ in the Belux hasn’t happened yet, as BYD is eating away market share more from its Chinese competitors than non-Chinese makes. The future will tell.