France's new-car market: prices, buyers and an ageing fleet # France's new-car market: prices, buyers and an ageing fleet How prices and the mix of buyers are shifting, why fewer new cars are being registered, and what that says about an unevenly renewed fleet. In 2019 the French market registered a little over 2.2 million new passenger cars a year. In 2025 it registered 1,665,000. On SDES's calculation that is 26.3% below the pre-pandemic level. But the French have not stopped needing cars: in the same year the used-car market reached 5.5 million transactions and accounted for 76.9% of all passenger-car purchases. People now buy new cars far less often; they swap an old one for another old one. That distinction changes what the statistics mean. A fall in new-car sales does not by itself mean the country has given up on private transport. It may mean that replacing a car has become dearer, harder or less attractive — and that different groups are drifting further apart in their ability to buy a modern one. ## Key points > **Key points** France registered 1,665,000 new cars in 2025, 26.3% below 2019; the used market (5.5 million transactions) has become the main route to purchase.> **Key points** The average list price of new cars rose 29% between 2019 and 2025, with about two-fifths of the increase coming from electrification and a shift into dearer segments.> **Key points** The poorest 40% of households have fallen from 24% to 15% of new-car buyers: the market is changing its social mix.> **Key points** Better-off families run younger fleets (9.4 years against 13.8 for the poorest decile) and make up more of the new buyers.> **Key points** State support (social leasing, subsidies) is bringing some poorer buyers back to the new electric-car market.> **Key points** The market's decline is explained by the overlap of CAFE, taxes, prices and car durability — not by inflation alone. ## The market shrank, but the need for a car did not France registered 1,665,000 new passenger cars in 2025, 5.2% fewer than in 2024 and 26.3% fewer than in 2019. This article uses the SDES national series throughout; industry databases report other totals, so figures from different registration systems are not mixed here. About 5.5 million used cars were sold at the same time, 0.9% more than a year earlier. Used cars accounted for 76.9% of purchases. ![The French new-car market: average list prices have risen, registrations have fallen](/upload/upload-french-new-car-market-auto-market-price-volume_en.svg) The French new-car market: average list prices have risen, registrations have fallen Sources: [SDES, new and used car registrations for 2025](https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/immatriculations-de-voitures-en-2025-le-marche-du-neuf-baisse-celui-de-loccasion-resiste); [IMT-IDDRI / C-Ways, barometer of market prices and volumes](https://c-ways.com/c-ways-et-limt-iddri-publient-le-barometre-de-levolution-des-prix-et-des-volumes-des-vehicules-neufs-en-france-en-2025/). The gap between the two markets is large. A new car calls for a big one-off sum or a long credit commitment. A used car keeps you mobile for less money, though it often means older machinery, a different level of safety and higher running risks. In 2025 the average age of a sold used car was 11.1 years. Cars over 15 years old reached 30.5% of transactions, while cars under five years old accounted for 28.7%; sales of that younger group fell 6.4% over the year. In other words, the used market does not merely supplement the new one. It has become the main route to a car. Even there, buyers find it ever harder to get a reasonably fresh car at an affordable price: supply of recent models is constrained by years of weak fleet renewal. ## Average prices rose — but not by 29% for every car The IMT-IDDRI and C-Ways barometer puts the rise in the average price of new passenger cars in France at 29% between 2019 and 2025. In 2025 the average stood at €34,600 against €35,200 a year earlier: after five consecutive years of growth, it edged down. A caveat is needed, without which the figure misleads easily. The authors collected manufacturers' prices from their websites and used registration data and the MarkLines production database. Commercial discounts, purchase subsidies and environmental levies are excluded. So this is a sales-weighted average list price, not the amount any particular buyer ended up paying. A 29% rise does not mean that the same model in the same trim went up by that much either. The market's mix changed. In the C-Ways and IMT-IDDRI decomposition, about two-fifths of the total price increase comes from the shift to electrified powertrains, which on average cost more than the internal-combustion cars they replace. The authors attribute the rest to buyers moving into dearer segments, manufacturers' pricing, and the cost of materials and labour. The difference shows when you compare by powertrain. Between 2019 and 2025 the average price of petrol cars rose 29%, diesel 18%. For conventional hybrids the authors record a 4% fall, for plug-in hybrids a 1% rise, for battery-electric cars 7%. So the single figure of +29% describes a change in the market's average composition, not an equal price rise across every type of car. Over the same period the average list price of new cars rose faster than consumer prices as a whole, which the barometer puts at 19%, and faster than the average gain in living standards, at 23%. These comparisons give direction, but they do not describe any one household's budget: the mean is not the median, and spending patterns differ between rich and poor households. ## Who is quietly leaving the new-car market The study's most striking finding is not about price but about who buys new cars. The lowest-income 40% of households fell from 24% of new-car buyers in 2019 to 15% in 2025. Over the same time the richest 10% of buyers rose from 22% to 30%. C-Ways and IMT-IDDRI note that the ratio of car price to buyer income — the measure the authors call *taux d’effort* — rose 23% for the bottom 40% of households over the same period. ![The share of poorer new-car buyers has fallen; their cars are older on average](/upload/upload-french-new-car-market-auto-market-social-access_en.svg) The share of poorer new-car buyers has fallen; their cars are older on average This is no longer just an argument about which index measures inflation better. The market is changing its social mix. When a former share of lower-income buyers drops out of new-car purchases, the average price can also rise because sales contain more large, expensive, well-specified models. SDES data on the cars households already own show a similar split. The richest 10% of families had cars averaging 9.4 years old. The poorest 10%, 13.8 years. The wealthiest 20% of households owned a quarter of the car fleet, while the poorest 20% accounted for 12% of cars. Among cars in the bottom income decile, 63% ran on diesel; in the top decile, 42%. The two studies cover different groups and different sides of the market, so they should not be merged into one statistical series. Together, though, they show a consistent picture: richer families are more likely to own cars and run younger fleets, while poorer families more often drive older cars and rarely enter the new-car market. ## An ageing fleet — the result of slower renewal On 1 January 2026 France had 40 million cars. That is 0.4% more than a year earlier. The average age of the fleet reached 11.8 years, while cars sent for scrappage averaged 20 years. Average annual mileage fell in 2025 to 11,600 kilometres per car. These data do not prove that every family has become poorer, or that a car has become unaffordable for everyone. People can keep a working car for longer for many reasons: the price of a new one, uncertainty about which engine to choose, the convenience of a car they already know, or simply because they drive less. But three observations together — falling new registrations, a rising average fleet age, and new purchases concentrating among better-off buyers — fit the hypothesis of slower renewal. The environmental effect here is ambiguous. New cars are gradually shifting to electrified powertrains, but old cars leave the fleet no faster than climate policy would like. At the start of 2026 battery-electric cars made up 3.5% of the fleet and plug-in hybrids another 2%. Diesel has slipped below half, yet the fleet is still mostly petrol and diesel. ## State support: who gets to replace a car The state tries to offset the gap in access through subsidies and special schemes. The clearest example is social leasing, which lets low-income households drive an electric car on preferential terms. IMT-IDDRI and C-Ways estimate that in 2024 social leasing accounted for almost a quarter of car purchases by the lowest-income households. The authors also estimate that 41% of electric cars bought by private individuals went to the bottom half of the income distribution with state help. Average support per electric car bought by that half was roughly twice what the top half received. This is an important qualification to the picture of social split: state support can indeed bring some poorer buyers back to the new-car market. But recipient numbers do not tell you how well the scheme works. They do not say how many of these purchases would have happened anyway without the subsidy, what the support costs the budget in total, or how many extra new cars the scheme sold. The tax side of policy is shifting too. Revenue from environmental levies on cars reached €888m in 2025 against €638m a year earlier. Widening the mass-based levy from 1 January 2025 also caught some plug-in hybrids. SDES data show plug-in hybrid sales fell from 147,100 to 109,800 and their market share dropped from 8.4% to 6.6%. Fully electric sales, by contrast, rose from 295,600 to 331,200; the share went from 16.8% to 19.9%. So state policy works on several fronts at once: it subsidises electric-car purchases, changes tax terms for heavier and more polluting models, and encourages the renewal of corporate fleets. These tools can speed the technological transition, but they also shape the price of entry into the market and which cars different groups can afford. ## What the inflation index actually measures Arguments about the price of a car often come down to comparing the average cost of a car with the consumer price index. The point is not to mix different measures. The C-Ways average list price moves with the mix of cars sold: if buyers shift to larger or electrified models, the average rises even when no single model gets dearer. The HICP does a different job — it measures consumer price change in a comparable category and adjusts for changes in the product's characteristics. For new cars, Eurostat's harmonised index has its own category, \`CP07111\` (*New motor cars*). The code \`CP0711\` covers a broader category of cars and should not automatically be used as a series of new cars only. So \`CP0711\` cannot stand alone when the analysis concerns new cars: it is wider than that category and includes used cars too. Comparing new-car prices needs the separate \`CP07111\` index. Eurostat's 2024 methodological report on France says INSEE applies an *option pricing* method to new cars to adjust for small quality changes and does not use a hedonic model; Eurostat accepted the practice as compliant. The adjustment does not mean the buyer pays nothing for new features. It means the index tries to separate a price change from a change in characteristics. So the gap between a 29% rise in average list prices and the comparable consumer price index does not by itself show that inflation is understated. That would require comparing the same category, the same period and the same method, then looking separately at actual transaction amounts after discounts, subsidies and credit terms. The barometer used here has no data on real transaction prices for the whole 2019–2025 period. ## Chinese brands: a price benchmark, not yet a replacement for the market Chinese makers offer another useful benchmark for the affordability debate. Transport & Environment estimated in July 2026 that electric cars from Chinese brands are on average about 21% cheaper than those from European makers. The comparison covers battery-electric cars on the European market, not all cars and not every comparable model in France. It shows price pressure from new entrants, but it does not prove that Chinese cars are automatically cheaper once trim, taxes, subsidies, tariffs and sales terms are taken into account. [Transport & Environment, analysis of Chinese automakers' presence in the EU market, 13 July 2026](https://www.transportenvironment.org/articles/presence_chinese_automakers_eu_car_market). In France their presence in 2025 remained noticeably slimmer than on some other European markets. *Journal de l’Automobile*, counting from AAA Data, put the brands selected by the journal that belong to Chinese auto groups at 57,269 registrations — about 3.5% of the French market. Of those, BYD registered 13,533 cars, or roughly 0.8% of the market; MG 33,729, about 2.1%. The composition of that group depends on how brands are classified by owner and origin, so the figure should be read within that particular sample, not as a universal official measure. [Journal de l’Automobile, sales of Chinese brands in France in 2025, 7 January 2026](https://journalauto.com/constructeurs/le-veritable-poids-des-marques-de-voitures-chinoises-en-france/). So Chinese brands do create real competitive pressure and offer cheaper electric cars in some segments, but in 2025 their share in France was not yet large enough to set the market's average price. Their value is rather as a control benchmark: they show that a car's price depends not only on the industry's overall costs but also on productivity, production scale, makers' strategy and competition. ## Why the market slumped: several causes, not one Falling new-car sales cannot be explained by price alone. In 2020–2022 the market hit a pandemic supply gap and a semiconductor shortage. Then makers' supply, the range of powertrains, emissions rules and taxation all changed. At the same time cars lasted longer, and the used market let people put off buying a new one. A Roland Berger study, published in 2026 for Plateforme automobile, Mobilians, Avere and Sesamlld, attributes a large part of the fall in registrations to CAFE regulation, indirect fiscal effects and direct taxes. The same analysis separately examines rising car prices, fuel costs and longer vehicle life. Because the study was commissioned by industry bodies, its causal estimates should be read as industry analysis, not as a neutral final decomposition of every factor. The broader conclusion matters more: the market shrank under several changes that overlapped. There is a flip side. In 2025 the average list price of new cars fell for the first time in five years, electric cars became cheaper relative to some internal-combustion models, and electric-car sales grew. That may mark the start of supply adjusting. One year, though, is not enough to call mass affordability restored: the share of poorer buyers remains well below its 2019 level. ## Who can replace cars, and how fast France has not stopped being a car market. The country still has about 40 million cars, and millions are sold on the used market every year. What changed is the structure of renewal: new cars are bought less often, their average list price has risen sharply over six years, and the share of poorer households among buyers has shrunk. The rise in the average price cannot be explained by inflation alone: much of it comes from electrification and the shift to dearer segments. Nor can everything be reduced to price: regulation, taxes, supply, fuel costs and longer vehicle life all shaped the market. The social outcome is clear enough. Better-off families run younger fleets and their share of new-car buyers is rising. Poorer families more often stay in older cars and depend more on the used market. State support changes this picture only partly, but so far does not close the gap in access. The French car story, then, is not simply about how much dearer cars have become. The real question is who can take part in the technological renewal of transport, and who must keep driving a previous-generation car for longer. The answer shapes not only the sales market but how fast the national fleet turns over, how evenly the environmental benefits are shared, and who bears the cost of the transition. ## Sources ### Prices and market composition * [IMT-IDDRI / C-Ways — Baromètre de l’évolution des prix et des volumes des véhicules neufs en France en 2025](https://c-ways.com/c-ways-et-limt-iddri-publient-le-barometre-de-levolution-des-prix-et-des-volumes-des-vehicules-neufs-en-france-en-2025/). Methodology, trends in average list prices and volumes, decomposition of price growth, the social mix of buyers, social leasing and purchase subsidies. * [SDES — Immatriculations de voitures en 2025 : le marché du neuf baisse, celui de l’occasion résiste](https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/immatriculations-de-voitures-en-2025-le-marche-du-neuf-baisse-celui-de-loccasion-resiste), 11.02.2026. New and used cars, engine types and the age of used vehicles. * [Journal de l’Automobile — Fiscalité automobile : pourquoi le marché français a perdu 26 % de ses ventes](https://journalauto.com/industrie/fiscalite-automobile-pourquoi-le-marche-francais-a-perdu-26-de-ses-ventes/), 19.08.2026. Review of the Roland Berger study commissioned by PFA, Mobilians, Avere and Sesamlld. * [Journal de l’Automobile — Le véritable poids des marques de voitures chinoises en France](https://journalauto.com/constructeurs/le-veritable-poids-des-marques-de-voitures-chinoises-en-france/), 07.01.2026. Registrations and shares of MG, BYD and other Chinese auto-group brands, per AAA Data. * [Transport & Environment — The presence of Chinese automakers in the EU car market](https://www.transportenvironment.org/articles/presence_chinese_automakers_eu_car_market), 13.07.2026. Price comparison of Chinese and European battery-electric cars on the EU market. ### Fleet and social differences * [SDES — Le parc automobile des ménages en 2023 : moins de voitures pour les plus modestes, plus souvent anciennes et diesel](https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/le-parc-automobile-des-menages-en-2023-moins-de-voitures-pour-les-plus-modestes-plus-souvent), 16.07.2024. Car ages, fleet distribution and household living standards. * [SDES — 40 millions de voitures en circulation en France au 1er janvier 2026](https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/40-millions-de-voitures-en-circulation-en-france-au-1er-janvier-2026), 10.07.2026. Fleet size, age and mileage. ### Price index methodology * [Eurostat — HICP Compliance Monitoring Report: France, 2024](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/272892/272977/HICP-compliance-monitoring-report-France-2024-en.pdf/fdd56091-741e-2ec4-9433-9e99e86416e7?t=1734511829786). Quality adjustments and the use of option pricing for new cars in France. * [Eurostat — HICP Methodological Manual, 2024 edition](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3859598/18594110/KS-GQ-24-003-EN-N.pdf). General rules for item replacement and quality adjustment. * [Eurostat — HICP annual data, dataset prc\_hicp\_aind](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/prc_hicp_aind/default/table), including the subcategory \`CP07111\` — new cars. **Note.** average list price, actual transaction price and HICP are different measures. This article does not add them together or treat them as interchangeable. Where a figure comes from a research barometer or an industry study, that is stated explicitly.