A total of 32 new vehicles were added to Malta’s streets each day throughout 2022, as the total stock of vehicles rose to 424,904, an increase of almost 12,000 over the previous year.
Just over 303,000, about 74.7% of vehicles on the road, are private passenger cars according to official statistics published on Wednesday by the National Statistics Office.
A further 12.2%, or 39,500, are motorcycles, e-bikes or pedelecs. Separate data for e-bikes and pedelecs was not published, however, the number of e-bikes on the road is described as “negligible”.
In total, 15,000 new vehicles were registered throughout 2022, the highest figure since 2019. Almost 6,500, or 42% of these, are new passenger cars, whilst 37%, or 5,700, are motorcycles and e-bikes.
Just over 2,000 cars were scrapped in the last quarter of 2022, resulting in an increase of 12 new private cars per day on Maltese roads.
Analysing these figures in light of NSO's population data reveals that there are now 817 cars for every 1,000 persons in Malta.
E-scooters
The number of registered e-scooters on the road has continued to increase, reaching 2,829 by the end of 2022.
E-scooters have become a common sight on Malta's roads in recent years, with their numbers increasing drastically from just under 200 at the end of 2020 to just under 3,000 two years later.
Electric & hybrid cars
Electric and hybrid vehicles account for just under 3% of all vehicles, lagging far behind petrol or diesel-powered vehicles at 59% and 37% respectively. A total of 11,626 electric or hybrid vehicles were on the road by the end of 2022.
Electric vehicles increased by 7% in the last quarter of 2022, whilst hybrid diesel and petrol vehicles also increased by 37% and 11% respectively.
On Monday the EU Parliament voted to ban sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2035.
Malta’s national transport masterplan admits that “The rate of uptake of plug-in hybrid and electric rolling stock lags behind that of most other European countries and is significantly contributing to national fossil fuel consumption and deterioration of air quality”.
Meanwhile, data published by Eurostat on Wednesday shows that Malta had the third-highest increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the third quarter of 2023, an increase of 8% over the previous year.