The Italian car market closes April confirming a growth trend. In the past month, 155,210 new cars were registered, an increase of 11.6% compared to the 139,106 units of April 2025. The data contributes to a positive first four months: total deliveries reach 640,083 vehicles, up 9.8% compared to 583,063 in the same period of 2025. Despite the improvement, the comparison with 2019 remains significant: the market still shows a -10.2% gap compared to four years ago.
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Car market growth in April
On the outlook front, however, the picture becomes more complicated. Despite a better-than-expected first part of the year, the projections cited by UNRAE for the next quarters have been revised downwards. In fact, the deterioration of the macroeconomic context has led to a downward recalibration of the 2026 market estimate by 10,000 units. The estimates are 1,530,000 registrations by the end of the year, essentially stable compared to 2025 (+0.3%). The expected cooling remains significant also in the multi-year perspective: the market would decline by 20.2% with 387,000 fewer units compared to 2019.
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Between electric and petrol
The dynamics for fuels and technologies continue to show mixed signals. Among rechargeables, pure electric vehicles gain share in April, with 8.5% compared to 4.8% in April 2025, although they show a slight decline compared to 8.6% in March. Plug-ins instead maintain high vitality: the share in April rises to 9.1% (from 5.7% in April 2025), in line with 9.1% in March, contributing to bring the total ECV share to 17.6%. Looking at traditional fuels, petrol falls by almost 7 points to 20.4% (and to 19.9% cumulatively), while diesel drops to 6.9% in April and 6.8% in the four months. LPG falls to 6.1% in April and 5.7% in January-April.
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