ROME – Despite the advent of micro-mobility, the crusades against diesel engines, the closure of historic centers, the awareness campaigns on the advantages of public transport, the increasingly numerous sharing and the continuous expansion of urban fleets of scooters, scooters and electric bikes that can be booked via the App, the number of cars per capita in Europe not only shows no sign of decreasing, but is indeed constantly increasing in most countries. The trend is reflected in the official numbers provided by Eurostat and in those of a specific study by Germany’s Center for Automotive Research (CAR) which, among other aspects, underlined that the Germans have no intention of giving up their personal car. that in 2020, the number of cars in Germany rose to 48.2 million, equivalent to 580 cars per 1000 inhabitants.
In terms of cars per capita, however, the native land of premium Audi, BMW and Porsche productions has less density than other nations because in 2019 (last year of normality before the pandemic) Luxembourg was firmly at the top of the list with 694 cars per 1000 inhabitants. Following (646 cars per 1000 inhabitants) is Italy which in some regions such as Valle d’Aosta and Trentino Alto Adige, detaches any other geographical area of the Old Continent with respectively 1711 and 1241 cars per thousand inhabitants.
In third place (629 cars per 1000 inhabitants) are Finland and Cyprus followed by Austria (563 per 1000) and Spain in which 536 cars per thousand people, equivalent to an increase of 13 percent compared to 2014. In the same period , the growth in the United Kingdom was 4 percent (equal to 526 cars per 1000 people) while in the Netherlands (519 cars per 1000 inhabitants) the growth rate in the last five years stands at 7 percent. The most sensational leap forward, however, belongs to Portugal which in the last five years has registered an increase of 20 percent equal to 514 cars per thousand people.
Growth in France (510/1000) and Belgium (507/1000) is more contained but always on the rise, both of which register more than 3% of personal cars compared to 2014 while with 505 cars per thousand inhabitants, Greece 8 percent. As regards the opposite spectrum of the ranking, the European countries with the lowest number of personal cars per capita are Hungary (373/1000), Latvia (369/1000) and Romania (332).
.