Revenue in the car and motorcycle industry declined by 2.6 percent in 2025 compared to 2024. Especially importers and the heavy commercial vehicle sector experienced a revenue decrease. However, entrepreneurs in the car and motorcycle industry are positive about the first quarter of 2026. This is the first time in over four years. This is according to the latest figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS).
Importers (-9.3 percent) and the heavy commercial vehicle sector (-6.4 percent) had the largest revenue losses. This while revenues had increased in previous years. Sales of heavy commercial vehicles fell by more than 37 percent in 2025. The largest decline was seen in the fourth quarter. Compared to a year earlier, 58.6 percent fewer heavy commercial vehicles were sold then. In the heavy commercial vehicle sector, revenue in the last quarter was 11.0 percent lower than the year before.
The largest sub-sector, trade and repair of passenger cars, recorded 1.8 percent less revenue than in 2024. The number of cars sold did increase slightly, by about 1.7 percent. Especially more electric cars (+18.1 percent) and hybrid cars (+9.8 percent) were sold.
Almost half more fully electric cars were sold in the last quarter than a year earlier. Almost half fewer cars with gasoline engines were sold.
Entrepreneurs in the car and motorcycle industry are positive about the coming quarter for the first time in over four years. The entrepreneur confidence in the car and motorcycle industry is 5.8 in the first quarter of 2026. Entrepreneurs are more positive about the economic climate expectations (9.6) than about the economic climate development (2.1). At the beginning of 2025, entrepreneur confidence was -12.5.
The sentiment of entrepreneurs in the car and motorcycle industry is more positive than that of many other sectors. Only in the Information and Communication sector are entrepreneurs more positive. A year earlier, the sentiment indicator in the car and motorcycle industry was much lower than in most other sectors.
The labor market in the car and motorcycle industry remains tight. More than 50 percent of entrepreneurs expect a shortage of labor for the first three months of 2026. This was also the case a year earlier.
At the same time, the number of open vacancies slowly decreased to 6.7 thousand at the end of 2025. In the first quarter of 2025, there were still 8.0 thousand.
Your support is worth gold. But honestly, black coffee makes us very happy too.