AI Analysis: New motor vehicle registrations, quarterly, by geographic level

Executive Summary

Canada's new motor vehicle registrations declined modestly by 3.1% from 2017 to 2025, with total quarterly registrations peaking at 610,662 in early 2017 and hitting a COVID-era low of 305,873 in Q2 2020. The market is heavily dominated by gasoline-powered vehicles and multi-purpose vehicles, though battery electric and zero-emission vehicles show a clear structural upward trend over the period. The dataset's extreme right skew — with a mean of 46,102 versus a median of just 4,880 — reflects how a small number of high-volume mainstream categories vastly outnumber niche fuel and vehicle type combinations.

Key Findings

• Total new motor vehicle registrations declined 3.1% over the study period, from approximately 425,000 in Q1 2017 to around 412,000 in the most recent quarter (Q3 2025).
• The single highest quarter on record was Q1 2017 with 610,662 registrations (z-score: 2.11), while the lowest was Q2 2020 with 305,873 registrations (z-score: -1.81), directly attributable to COVID-19 disruptions.
• Only 4 quarters across the entire 2017–2025 period were flagged as statistical outliers (|z| > 1.5), indicating the market has been relatively stable outside of the pandemic shock.
• The 'All fuel types | Total, vehicle type' category accumulated over 16 million registrations across all quarters, compared to just 1 registration for the rarest combination — 'Other fuel types | Pickup trucks'.
• The data is strongly right-skewed: the mean registration value (46,102) is nearly 10 times the median (4,880), with 25% of all records showing fewer than 189 registrations and a standard deviation of 101,415.
• Battery electric and zero-emission vehicle registrations show a notable structural upward trend over the period, representing a growing shift away from conventional gasoline vehicles.
• The dataset tracks 8 fuel types and 5 vehicle types across 36 quarters, producing 1,440 records with values ranging from 0 to 610,662 — highlighting the vast difference in scale between niche and mainstream vehicle categories.