The average age of cars in Spain exceeds 14.5 years

The Spanish car fleet is ageing year by year and there is no prospect of it improving in the short or medium term. The age of the fleet of passenger cars in circulation in Spain is already 14.5 years on average, compared to 14.2 years in 2023, according to the study by the consultancy firm Ideauto provided by the association of vehicle manufacturers Anfac.

This means that the weight of vehicles older than 20 years is growing in the total fleet, already representing 27.7% of the total fleet and some 8.7 million cars, 11.2% more than last year. Adding this trend to the fact that registrations have not yet recovered to pre-pandemic figures, this means that vehicles less than 5 years old only represent 16.4% of the total, especially in passenger cars, whose weight is even smaller, 16.2%, of the total fleet, a situation that the general director of Anfac, José López-Tafall, considers “very worrying”.

And this trend towards ageing of the vehicle fleet will continue to rise, according to Anfac data. The fleet will continue to grow and age at a constant rate until at least reaching 16 years in 2030, without any action being taken to slow down or halt this trend. This is not a good path, in the opinion of the sector, for two fundamental reasons: its negative impact on road safety and on the environment in an environment where the European challenge is zero accidents and zero emissions in transport.

The improvement in technology and equipment in new vehicles, as well as the enormous advances in driving assistance systems, significantly reduce accidents at the wheel. The Director General of Traffic, Pere Navarro, explains that “the risk of dying or being seriously injured in a road accident is multiplied by two when comparing accidents that occur with vehicles that are ten to fifteen years old, compared to vehicles that are less than five years old.”

The same relationship exists between older vehicles and polluting emissions. According to Anfac data, vehicles without environmental labelling or those classified as B contribute to 93% of polluting emissions. And going into the details of emissions, there is another big difference: a recent Euro 6 petrol car (label C) emits 60 milligrams of NOx per kilometre travelled, while one from before 2001 (Euro 3, label B) emits 2.5 times more.

Industrial vehicles are the oldest in the fleet, with an average age of 15.1 years; closely followed by commercial vehicles, with 14.7 years, and in third place are buses, with an average age of 11.5 years, being the youngest in the Spanish vehicle fleet.

In 2024, 31.3 million vehicles were registered in the vehicle fleet, which represents 1.9% year-on-year. The Ideauto report explains that this relationship is due to the fact that “the Spanish vehicle fleet is increasing given that the balance between new registrations and deregistrations and/or scrapping is positive.”

The number of passenger vehicles reached 26.4 million, which increased by 1.7% year-on-year. Commercial vehicles increased by 2.7% in the last year, reaching 4.1 million units. Industrial vehicles grew the most in absolute terms by 3.4% and 616,878 units in total. Finally, buses totalled 64,097 units, 1.9% more than in 2023.

By type of combustion, diesel vehicles continue to be the majority in the Spanish fleet, with almost 3 out of 5 vehicles (58.9%) using this fuel, decreasing slightly, by 0.5%, compared to 2023, and standing at 18,427,111 units. Gasoline vehicles represent 33.8% of the fleet, mainly driven by passenger cars.

On the other hand, the fleet of electrified vehicles has reached 495,086 units in 2024, representing 1.7% of the total.

The most acceptable option for Spanish drivers in this market is plug-in hybrids (PHEV) with 258,238 total units (1% of the fleet) compared to 200,945 units of purely electric vehicles (BEV), 0.7% of the total fleet.