The total number of vans, totalling 4,007,331, increased 4.3% over 2014, compared to medium and heavy commercial vehicles whose numbers increased by 2.1% to 581,645. In the same period, the number of buses declined 0.5% to 88,126. Passenger car growth was 2.9% to 33.5 million.
Despite the popularity of vans, both they and larger commercial vehicles were found to have similar age profiles judged from date of first registration: 8.5 years for vans, and 8.8 years for medium and heavy commercial vehicles and buses.
The average age of the UK truck fleet is relatively worse than those of France (7.5 years average; total fleet, 650,000) and Germany (8.0 years; total fleet, 980,000) but much younger than Spain (12.6 years; total fleet, 586,000). Overall, the UK fleet is younger than the EU average (currently 10.7).
