Portugal’s average car age has reached the highest it has ever been.
The data coming from the Automobile Association of Portugal (ACAP) shows that, since 2000, the average age of cars in Portugal has gone from 7.2 years to 12.7 years.
This means that of the 5.015 million regular cars and motorcycles traveling on national roads, 62% are over 10 years old. There are almost 3.1 million cars registered before 2008. And of these almost 900,000 are over 20 years old.
This 900,000 over 20 years old corresponds to 17.8% of the total number of passenger cars in circulation in the country as of the 31st of December 2018.
With vehicles in the country being this old, it also means that motorists are more likely to suffer a breakdown and other faults in their cars due to parts being worn out over time. This means an increased demand for replacement parts to fix these cars and keep the vehicles on the road, with many good car parts being found at Autoparts-24.com.
In total, there are 6.281 million vehicles registered in Portugal, and light passenger vehicles such as cars and motorbikes are worth almost 80% of the market. Commercial vehicles are numbered at around 1.1 million vehicles, and the average age is 14.1 years (the previous year it was 13.7 years), and this rises to nearly 15 years old in the 16.200 heavy passenger vehicles (14.8 in 2017) in circulation.
"For several years, the ACAP has been warning of the aging of the cars," says the association's secretary-general, noting that "over 10 years, it is already considered, in European terms, that the car is aged." Revising the Single Road Tax so that it “no longer encourages the ownership of very old cars, as it currently does,” is one of the suggested solutions, says Helder Pedro, who acknowledges that the end of incentives to prevent old car ownership has “also contributed a lot” to the situation.
ACAP car statistics show that car density in Portugal has declined slightly, from 2.2 light cars per inhabitant to an average of 2.0 in 2018. Faro and Guarda are the districts with the lowest car density - 1.7 cars per inhabitant, and the rankings are led by Setúbal, with 2.4 cars per inhabitant. Lisbon remains at 2.1 and Porto has reduced from 2.4 to 2.3 vehicles per inhabitant.
Car production was also the highest ever in 2018, for the first time overcoming the 200,000 barrier. In fact, 234,151 passenger cars were made in Portugal last year, an increase of 85.2% compared to 126,426 in 2017.
