The average age of vehicles in Croatia in the first half of 2022 was 14.74 years, and nearly 70% of the vehicles were 10 or more years old, the Croatian Centre for Vehicles reported earlier this week.

In the first six months of this year, there were 1,244,465 registered vehicles in Croatia.

As many as 68.14% of them were 10 or more years old, while 14.73% were between six and nine years old and 12.79% were between two and five years old.

Only 4.33% were up to one year old.

By comparison, the average vehicle age was 14.18 years in 2020 and 14.34 years in 2021.

“Although we hope that this number will fall by the end of the year, the increasing average age of vehicles in Croatia shows the importance of regular vehicle maintenance and technical inspection,” said Tomislav Skreblin from the Centre for Vehicles.

Most of the newly-registered vehicles were passenger cars — 54,429, of which 23,777 were new and 30,652 were used vehicles. 50% of them were powered by diesel and 35% by petrol, while 9.9% were hybrid vehicles.

Only 2.35% were fuelled by petrol and LPG, 1.32% were electric vehicles, 1.11% were hybrid vehicles with external charging, 0.02% were fuelled by petrol and natural gas, and 0.0018% only by natural gas.

Utility vehicles predominantly used diesel fuel as well.

There was a considerable increase in the number of new hybrid passenger cars, accounting for around 21% of the newly-registered vehicles in the first half of 2022. On the other hand, used hybrid passenger cars accounted for only 2.4% of the newly-registered vehicles.

A total of 5,419 hybrid vehicles, 605 hybrid vehicles with external charges and 721 electric vehicles were registered in the first half of the year.