Newer used cars are disappearing abroad, driving up second-hand car prices. In 2023, a new record was broken – so many Swedish-registered cars have never been exported.
Finding a newer used electric car or hybrid is difficult. The range is small and the prices are high. Part of the explanation for this is that many of the lease cars that are traded in quickly disappear abroad. A weak krona has made Sweden a hot market for car dealers around Europe.
If we count all kinds of passenger cars, the export of used cars rose by 40 percent in 2023 compared to the previous year. That figure gives a bad picture of exports because the plug-in cars are significantly hotter. They increased by 102 percent in 2023.
A total of 153,600 passenger cars were exported in 2023. Of these, 30,500 were rechargeable.
A full 73 percent of the vehicles were less than 10 years old. The median age is 4 years, the lowest ever. The rechargeable cars are on average 2.5 years old.
That the Swedish used market has become hotter due to greater international interest is also shown by the number of export companies increasing by 55 percent.
– We see a clear change in the composition of the Swedish vehicle stock. Passenger cars under 10 years of age are decreasing sharply and the vehicle fleet is now getting older. This trend is primarily driven by the large export of younger passenger cars in combination with the weak new car market, says Ulf Roberts-Jones, CEO of the analysis company Vroom, which produced the figures behind.
The top brands – Volvo, Volkswagen and Audi
Among the 10-year-old cars, Volkswagen tops the statistics among brands with 17,767 cars – an increase of 77 percent. In second place we find Volvo with 16,221 cars (+69%) and in third place Audi with 12,756 cars (+61%). The biggest increase in percentage among the ten largest brands is accounted for by Toyota in eighth place. The brand increased by 136 percent to 4,513 cars in 2023.
Among the rechargeable vehicles, Volvo, Volkswagen and BMW are at the top. All brands increased more than the average of 102 percent. The most powerful rockets are MG, which with 1,232 cars increased by over 12,000 percent and Tesla, which increased by 451 percent (1,013 cars).
