Race Against the Capacity Lows: Will Truck Registrations Mitigate
Market Monday - Week 19 - Implication and assessment of latest heavy truck registration figures
Last week, ACEA published the 2026 first-quarter heavy truck registration figures, an update I eagerly awaited to assess a crucial component of how the available fleet in Europe is evolving. Looking back, in January, we observed that registrations in Q4 stabilized and stopped their YoY decline, but remained significantly below 2023 and 2024 levels. Will Q1 of 2026 show a change in trend and provide positive signs for mitigating the current capacity strains?
The following map illustrates changes in heavy truck registrations from Q1 of 2025 to Q1 of 2026. The outcome varies, but the overall increasing trend in Europe is visible.
In the past few quarters, we saw many countries colored blue, with only some yellow outliers occurring. This time, a more positive picture is visible, showing that several more countries have turned to the plus side in the YoY comparison. Even better, that fleet heavyweights (with their usual high absolute numbers of registrations) like Poland, Spain, Germany and Italy are seeing increases. On the contrary Belgium, Finland, Hungary and France continued the downward trend.
This positive development is urgently needed to mitigate and limit the downward trend in available road capacity across Europe. The following chart provides a visualization of recent developments and trends in total registrations, including heavy-duty BEVs, FCEVs and natural gas vehicles.
Registrations are trending upwards, however, totals remain significantly below the peak levels. Following recent developments, like Volvo’s lift in truck market expectation after order intake increases during Q1, we expect the trend to continue in Q2. This is an important and crucial development as the available capacity in the market approaches their all time lows according to our capacity index figures.
Another trend is that BEVs registrations almost doubled compared to Q1 of 2025, contributing to the overall increases, although they still remain niche on a grand scale with a 2,2% share in Europe. Without the growth contributions from electric trucks, the registration would only show a 11,8% increase compared to 12,9%.
Stay tuned for Market Monday on May 25th with an in-depth analysis of other engine type registrations and usage as measured in the Transporeon platform.
Christian Dolderer
Principal Domain Expert
Trimble Transportation (Transporeon)