Gas vehicle registrations down year-over-year: StatCan

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New gas vehicle registrations drop, but zero-emission vehicles rise: StatCan

Michael Lee CTVNews.ca Lead Afternoon Producer

Published Tuesday, October 11, 2022 1:13PM EDT Last Updated Tuesday, October 11, 2022 1:49PM EDT

An electric vehicle is charged in Ottawa, July 13, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Newly released quarterly figures from Statistics Canada show new registrations for gas-powered vehicles fell year-over-year but rose for diesel and hybrid cars.

The federal agency released its on Tuesday for the second quarter of 2022, or from April to June, which found that new registrations for gas vehicles were down 15.6 per cent compared to the same quarter in 2021.

Meanwhile, registrations for new diesel-powered and hybrid electric vehicles rose year-over-year by 14.9 per cent and 5.2 per cent respectively, the report says.

Gas vehicles still made up the majority of all new vehicle registrations in Canada in the second quarter at 81.4 per cent, the data shows.

However, this is down from the 95.1 per cent share gas-powered vehicles had in the second quarter of 2017, which StatCan says is the first year quarterly estimates became available.

In total, Canadians registered 431,861 new motor vehicles in the second quarter of 2022, down 11.2 per cent from a year ago but up 27.1 per cent from the first quarter of this year.

StatCan says the highest number of new registrations, since 2017, are recorded in the second quarter, with the exception of 2020 when dealerships closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions put in place to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

ZEVs

Looking at zero-emission vehicles, StatCan says Canadians registered 29,832 in the second quarter of 2022, more than double the 14,879 registered in the same quarter back in 2018.

Zero-emission vehicles made up 6.9 per cent of all new vehicles registered in this year's second quarter, up from 4.9 per cent a year earlier, the report says. Among those, battery-electric vehicle registrations rose 34.6 per cent year-over-year and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles were up 2.9 per cent.

When it came to vehicle types overall, new pickup trucks saw the only increase in the second quarter at 5.8 per cent from a year ago, the report says, while new registrations for vans, passenger cars and multi-purpose vehicles all fell 29.7 per cent, 23.4 per cent and 11.1 per cent respectively during that time.