SEOUL - South Korea saw its first ever decline in the overall number of registered fuel-powered vehicles in 2023, as reported by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on Jan 19.
The total number of registered vehicles powered by petrol, diesel and liquefied petroleum gas fell by 85,000 to 23.647 million in 2023.
This 0.4 per cent decrease, the first since record-keeping began in the 1960s, was mainly driven by a downturn in diesel and liquefied petroleum gas vehicles, despite the registration of petrol vehicles seeing a 2 per cent uptick.
Several factors contributed to the decline, such as governmental policies aimed at reducing vehicle pollution.
These include retiring older, more polluting vehicles, particularly those running on diesel, enforcing operational limitations in Seoul and offering financial incentives to owners for scrapping their high-emission vehicles.
The total number of vehicle registrations, including traditional and eco-friendly models, increased by 1.7 per cent to 25.49 million vehicles.
Eco-friendly vehicles, at 2.12 million, represented nearly one in every 12 vehicles.
Within this category, hybrids account for about 72 per cent, electric vehicles (EVs) for around 26 per cent, and hydrogen-powered vehicles, alongside others, fill the remaining 2 per cent.
The eco-friendly segment grew to a total count of 2.12 million registrations, a 33.4 per cent jump from the previous year.
This figure includes 154,000 EVs, up 39.5 per cent, 46,000 hydrogen vehicles, up 15.6 per cent, and 372,000 hybrid vehicles, up 31.7 per cent.
Despite this growth, the rate of the increase in EV count slowed compared with the previous year’s 51 per cent rise, showing a potential moderation in the adoption rate of EVs.
The government has been gradually withdrawing support for hybrid vehicles.
It discontinued purchase subsidies for hybrid EVs in 2019 and ended subsidies for plug-in hybrids in early 2021.
Plans are in place to remove hybrids from the eco-friendly category by 2025 or 2026. THE KOREA HERALD/ ASIA NEWS NETWORK
