Electric vehicles (EVs) are taking over, and older vehicles are being tossed out. This is the automotive equivalent of natural selection but with a different end. Being somewhat immortal, outdated vehicles take their place on Earth as relics of a time long past. If not taken back to their makers to be EV converted, the cars find their new homes at car fleets where they are revitalised once more and sold for frequent use.
But as the number of outdated car fleets in Europe increases over the years, this has sparked attention from many in the industry, particularly one business-to-business (B2B) car company, which has researched European car fleets and found surprising results.
The report and its findings
The July 2026 report identifies several countries as having the oldest passenger car fleets in Europe. eCarsTrade, the B2B car company responsible for the study, has published a report which compares European countries with respect to their fleets. These are ranked on a scale based on their age and placed into one of three categories: very old (over 20 years), old (over 10 years), and lacking newer vehicles (under five years).
Among the many European car fleets studied in this report, EVs are rarely seen and make up less than 1% of the cars held in some of Europe’s car fleets. This is in spite of their growing popularity in recent years amid the progress on net zero targets and climate change objectives.
UK EV sales targets
Here in the UK, the government has launched a review of EV sales targets, and manufacturers and experts from across the automotive space have been asked for their opinions on how to “phase out” sales of petrol and diesel manufacturing by 2035. The important question to ask is whether people prefer driving EVs to petrol and diesel cars and, based on countless studies and reports, 92% of global EV drivers claim to prefer EVs over their petrol and diesel counterparts.
Yet the number of people driving combustion engine vehicles is still high, and outdated vehicles held in car fleets are typically where these vehicles are sourced from. Despite 70% of car fleet businesses now ending their addition of combustion engine vehicles to their fleets, many car fleets consisting mostly of outdated vehicles still sell their combustion engine cars to customers, resulting in a great number of people still driving petrol and diesel vehicles.
The countries driving outdated cars
The eCarsTrade report shows the number of Europeans still driving outdated cars. Georgians, the report finds, are the people driving the most worn-out cars, with half of their vehicles driven today being released in 2005 or earlier. Albania’s car fleets score first place (93.6 out of 100) for the country possessing the oldest car fleets. Georgia, Romania, Serbia, Poland, Montenegro, and Estonia, score 70 or above. Of the countries listed, Georgia is the standout mention, scoring 93.5, just shy of first place.
Old cars, particularly the classic ones, remain beloved symbols of expert manufacturing and innovative craftsmanship. This is why they’re hard to give up, and some claim that their combustion engines add to the charm of their iconic brands. But legal requirements demand a change of models. Some manufacturers have found a way to preserve these classic designs whilst meeting net zero targets but, if not converted to EVs to preserve their exterior designs, many of these beloved vehicles become relics and are taken to car fleets where they’re held for years.
Lack of newer vehicles in fleets
In the report, Albania is shown as having 43% of its cars dating back over two decades. eCarsTrade brands it “Europe’s car graveyard”, due to having almost half of its vehicles predating modern safety and emissions standards by a generation. In Albania, 91% of vehicles are over a decade old, which is the highest rate of any country. As EVs form less than 1% of the cars held at its car fleets, the report finds Albania’s roads to be running almost entirely on aging combustion engines.
Georgia is the standout mention again, because it is also a country whose drivers own some of the oldest cars on the continent: 51% of its cars are at least 20 years old (a percentage much higher than Albania) and only 5% of its cars are under five years old. Georgia scored the third lowest percentage of car fleets whose cars are five years old or under, with Albania the lowest at 3% and North Macedonia second lowest at 4%. The country with the highest percentage is Luxembourg, which showed in the data as having 43.11% of its cars dating back five years or under.
The UK scored 18.8 out of 100 for the age of its car fleets. Amongst UK fleets, 3.85% are fully electric cars and 5% are cars under 20 years old. A significant proportion (41%) of cars in UK fleets date back over 10 years. With demands to meet net zero targets, the pressure has never been higher to get this number down to achieve the aim of increasing the percentage of EVs.
Greater problems
But, “the age problem in Eastern Europe is only half of the story”, an auto industry expert from eCarsTrade said, continuing, “Georgia is one of the biggest re-exporters of salvage vehicles in the world. Wrecked cars come in from the US and Japan, get picked up, and get sold on. Many of them don’t leave and end up being driven locally. That means a big chunk of that fleet isn’t just old; it’s cars with serious accident histories that were repaired to a basic standard and put back on the road.”
The automotive industry is a sector that forever lives on. Whether relics, classics, or newer vehicles, cars are a testament to timeless craftsmanship and great innovation. Yet it’s an industry with many problems to solve, particularly when it comes to vehicle overabundance and meeting government targets. EVs and EV conversions are two of the many ways the sector is showing resilience but, as time passes and governments demand more EVs, what happens to older vehicles still in use and still popular among car fleets in the wider parts of Europe?
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