Passenger cars much heavier, especially due to on the rise of electric cars

Passenger cars in the Netherlands have become on average in the past ten years longer, wider and, above all, heavier. For example, the average passenger car now weighs 1,254 kilos, 8.1 percent more than in 2015.

This is apparent from the report Autobesitasthat the Statistics Agency CBS published on Monday. The average car that drives around in the Netherlands is also about 5 percent longer and 3.6 percent wider than in 2016, the most recent year for which the CBS has such detailed data.

The recent weight gain mainly attributes Statistics Netherlands to the rise of the (partly) electric car, which are heavier due to the housing for the battery packages. The average plug car weighs 1,875 compared to 1,217 kilos for a petrol car. The battery packages themselves are not counted, says Marjolijn Jaarsma of Statistics Netherlands: « If you did, the total weight is even higher. »

Of all the cars driving around in the Netherlands and were produced in 2024, almost half (49 percent) are now a plug car (hybrid or full electric). For the year of construction in 2016, that is not yet one in twenty (4.4 percent). « For electric cars and plug-in hybrids have been favorable economic rules in recent years, » says Jaarsma, « think of subsidy schemes for buying an electric car. »

« More and more electric cars and hybrids are being sold, so the average weight will continue to rise, » says Stijn Oosterhoff of BOVAG, branch organization of Dutch car companies. Yet the electrification is not the only explanation for the weight gain, he says: « In the top-50 most sold petrol cars you also see that those cars have become heavier. »

According to Oosterhoff, this is due to the introduction of all kinds of safety systems, « such as sturdy body structures, but also electronics for anti-blocking and anti-slip systems. » According to Jaarsma, people also started driving more in so -called SUVs, cars that are higher, wider and heavier than other types of passenger cars. In 2023, more than 50 percent of the cars sold in Europe was an SUV.

If you look at the average weight in the year in which a car was built, it becomes even clearer that cars are getting heavier. The average weight of cars with year of construction 2024 is 1,554 kilos, in 2014 it was still 1,180 kilos. To find a year from before 2014 in which the average car weighed more than 1,400 kilos, we have to go far back in time. In 1980, when the oil crisis still caused high fuel prices, a new car weighed 1,430 kilos.

« At that time, the car industry was very busy with weight reduction to make driving more economical, » says Roeland Kimman, press officer at the RAI association. « In particular, lighter materials were used a lot, such as replacing steel with aluminum and plastic. »

The ever -thicker cars are not yet a problem for the Dutch infrastructure, thinks Sandra Erkens, professor of civil engineering at TU Delft. « The weight of personal cars is actually not a leader for the design of roads, trucks are much more important in this. You need about ten thousand personal cars for the damage that a truck can cause on a road. »

Erkens can imagine that heavier cars could cause more wear on the top of the road. « At the moment we don’t have good models about that, so you can’t say much about it » Should the development of increasingly heavier cars continue, it is important that research is being done into the consequences for roads, says Erkens: « Then you will not suddenly be faced with unexpected costs. »

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