Last year, cars traveled more kilometres in Portugal, a total of 80.7 billion vehicles/kilometres (vkm). The data were revealed by the National Institute of Statistics on European Day without Cars.
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22/09/2026
by
Lusa
Nlast year, the cars traveled more kilometers in Portugal, an increase in two percent. They are figures of the National Institute of Statistics (INE) known this Tuesday (September 22) – the European Day without Cars.
In 2025, the NSA, which first discloses this information, estimates that 80.7 billion kilometre vehicles (vkm) have been travelled by the national vehicle park, plus two percent compared to 2024 and more 10.2 percent compared to 2015 (first year of the series available).
A vehicle-kilometre corresponds to “the movement of a motorised road vehicle within one kilometre”. That is, if two cars travel 10 kilometers each, it is 20 km, measuring the total of kilometers made by the vehicles.
Movements of light passenger vehicles accounted for 75.2 percent of total traffic – plus 0.7 percentage points compared to 2024 and more 5.3 percent compared to 2015. Light goods vehicles represented 16.8 percent, minus 0.8 percent and minus 5.7 percent respectively.
Combustion takes less distance
The movement of combustion vehicles has reduced, both in diesel (less than 0.7 percent), to 56.7 billion km vehicles, and in petrol (less than one percent), to 16.3 billion km vehicles.
These figures corresponded, respectively, to 70.2 percent (less than 1.9 percent) and 20.1 percent (less than 0.6 percent) of the total vehicle-km.
Light passenger vehicles moved similar to the total and grew between 2015 and 2019, a year of up to 53.1 billion vkm. Despite growth, there has been a progressive slowdown over this period: 3.8 percent in 2016, 2.2 percent in 2017 and 1.5 percent in 2018 and 2019.
Traffic of fickle goods vehicles
Freight vehicle traffic (light and heavy) has been irregular throughout the series. Since 2015, traffic in light goods vehicles has decreased by 13.1 percent to 13.6 billion vkm, heavy goods traffic has decreased by five percent to 1.2 billion vkm and traffic in road tractors has increased by 33.3 percent (4.0 billion vkm).
In 2025, only road tractors grew (more than 4.6 percent). The movement of light goods decreased 2.6 percent while the heavy movement contracted 4.1 percent.
The new information provides a series starting in 2015, allowing the analysis of the evolution of road traffic over the last decade, by type of vehicle and type of fuel.
The results now published allow us to characterize the evolution of traffic carried out by the different types of Portuguese registration vehicles subject to periodic inspection and constitute a new source of information for the monitoring of road mobility in Portugal.