September 27, 2023 – Canadians registered 466,990 new vehicles in the second quarter of 2023, reports Statistics Canada. So, what are we buying?

New registrations of vans (+29.4%) saw the largest increase in percentage terms, followed by multi-purpose vehicles (+14.7%) and pickup trucks (+1.1%).

In Q2, the sole year-over-year decrease was observed in passenger cars (-7.1%), despite increasing 37.0% from the previous quarter.

In the second quarter, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) had the largest percentage increase amongst fuel types (+49.3%) when compared with one year earlier, followed by hybrid electric vehicles, which increased 42.0% during the same period.

New registrations of battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) also increased when compared with the same quarter a year prior (+29.5%).

New registrations of gasoline-powered vehicles increased 4.7% from the same quarter of 2022, which represents the second consecutive year-over-year quarterly increase for this fuel type after six consecutive declines. Diesel-powered vehicles decreased 14.5% from a year earlier, but increased by 18.9% from the first quarter of 2023.

Nationwide, a total of 40,233 new zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) were registered in the second quarter—an increase of 34.9% from the same period last year. ZEV registrations in the second quarter consisted of 70.1% BEVs and 29.9% PHEVs.

In Q2 2023, the largest growth among vehicle types for BEVs was pickup trucks, with a total of 1273 new vehicles registered. This represents a 721.3% increase when compared with the 155 new BEV pickup trucks registered during the same period a year ago.

For PHEVs, the largest growth observed was in multi-purpose vehicles, with 10,559 registrations, increasing 69.4% from Q2 2022.

Provincially, the largest number of new ZEVs was registered in Quebec (16,781) in the second quarter of 2023, representing 14.7% of total new registrations in the province. In British Columbia, 15.2% of new vehicle registrations were ZEVs, with 8,640 registered. Ontarians registered 11,335 new ZEVs, representing 6.2% of total new registrations within the province.

More ZEVs were registered in all other jurisdictions in the second quarter compared with one year earlier, with the largest percentage increases in Prince Edward Island (+147.8%), New Brunswick (+117.6%), Manitoba (+54.9%) and Saskatchewan (+36.3%).