The Great Decoupling: How the BEV Transition is Redrawing Europe’s Logistics Map
Market Monday - Week 7 - Implication and assessment of latest heavy truck registration figures
At the end of January, ACEA published the latest registration figures for commercial vehicles in Europe. These figures serve as a key performance indicator for available transport capacity and mid-term market sentiment. In our previous post on heavy truck registrations, we highlighted the significant year-over-year decline within Q1-Q3 2025 figures. Adding the last quarter of 2025 to the mix did not reverse this trend. In Q4, registrations stabilized and stopped their YoY decline, but they remain significantly below 2022 and 2023 levels.
The following map illustrates the changes in heavy truck registrations from 2024 to 2025, revealing a mixed picture by country, while total registrations show a significant decline for Europe.
Many European nations saw registrations drop compared to last year, with Greece and the Netherlands leading the board. Other significant declines of around 10% were recorded for economic heavyweights such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. However, after Q4, more countries moved to the positive side, led by Lithuania, or reduced their declines. Poland, a fleet heavyweight, concluded with a 9,2% increase in new registrations.
This confirms that in some regions, modernization investments in fleets are made. Interestingly, all countries with positive registration figures in 2025 rely almost entirely on diesel engines. In stark contrast, countries with lower overall registrations showed strong battery-electric vehicle (BEV) registrations.
The following map illustrates the share of BEVs in all heavy truck registrations of the fourth quarter of 2025. The tooltip (mouse-over) also provides the full 2025 share in registrations as the baseline for assessing the Q4 acceleration.
Early leaders with an increasing share of heavy electric trucks amongst all new registrations are Switzerland and Norway, followed by the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria. Remarkably, within a few quarters, 1 out of 8 new registered trucks in Austria runs on battery-electric power. While in Switzerland and Denmark, 1 out of 6 new heavy trucks sold is already a BEV.
The industrial and, consequently, fleet number heavyweights, France and Germany, follow this trend, however, with far more moderate relative electric fleet additions. Nevertheless, Germany is the largest market for electric trucks in numbers, with a ca. 28% share of all new registered BEVs in Europe.
Thoughts and perspective
Looking at these maps, I see a pattern: the further south (except for Greece) or east in Europe, the lower the share of electric trucks in new registrations. International fleet heavyweights like Poland and Lithuania invested in, and thereby committed their business models to diesel-powered trucking. While western and northern Europe started the transition toward electrified trucking. I foresee, within two years or so, a more segmented road transportation landscape, with international long-distance diesel specialists on one side and short to mid-distance national or cross-border zero-emission specialists on the other side of the market. This likely will lead to a decoupling of markets and presumably more volatile prices in international diesel-backed transportation, as network efficiency might decrease with the “loss” of lucrative cabotage journeys for international fleet owners to low-emission specialists. These early BEV adopters are likely to gain market share, improve their network efficiency and overall utilisation during the transition period.
In such a scenario, I expect diesel transport prices to come under downward pressure, while carrier costs will rise due to increased empty kilometers and network imbalances. As a result, over time, the overall fleet in the diesel segment will decrease, leading to significant volatility and uncertainty in prices and capacity due to the decoupling.
Christian Dolderer
Lead Research Analyst
Trimble Transportation (Transporeon)