The number of cars registered daily has already started to fall compared with two years ago.
Yes — there are fewer cars being registered daily in Malta now than two years ago. NSO new-registration data (NR-085-2026, Table 2) shows 14,433 passenger cars newly licensed in 2023, falling to 14,104 in 2025 — a reduction of 329 cars/year, or about one fewer car registered per day (39.5/day → 38.6/day). The directional claim is supported. The qualifier on Mostly True is that the fall is modest in size — 2.3% across two years — and the path was non-monotonic: 2024 was actually the peak (15,071 cars, 41.3/day) before the 2025 dip brought the rate back below 2023. 'Started to fall' captures the right direction but slightly overstates a softer-than-it-sounds movement. The substantive answer is yes, but the policy-relevant magnitude is small.
Yes — there are fewer cars being registered daily in Malta now than two years ago. NSO new-registration data (NR-085-2026, Table 2) shows 14,433 passenger cars newly licensed in 2023, falling to 14,104 in 2025 — a reduction of 329 cars/year, or about one fewer car registered per day (39.5/day → 38.6/day). The directional claim is supported. The qualifier on Mostly True is that the fall is modest in size — 2.3% across two years — and the path was non-monotonic: 2024 was actually the peak (15,071 cars, 41.3/day) before the 2025 dip brought the rate back below 2023. 'Started to fall' captures the right direction but slightly overstates a softer-than-it-sounds movement. The substantive answer is yes, but the policy-relevant magnitude is small.
We tested Bonett's claim against the NSO Motor Vehicles News Release NR-085-2026 (Q1 2026 publication), reading Table 2 (newly licensed motor vehicles) restricted to the passenger-car category to match the literal 'cars' reading of the claim. The methodological question is whether daily passenger-car registrations are lower in 2025 than 2023.
Verdict lands at Mostly True because the directional claim is supported by the data — 39.5 cars/day registered in 2023, 38.6/day in 2025 — but the size of the fall is modest (2.3% across two years, about one fewer car per day) and the trajectory was non-monotonic (2024 saw the peak at 41.3/day before 2025's dip). 'Started to fall' reads as a sharper movement than the data carries. Direction confirmed; magnitude soft.
Are fewer cars really being registered daily than two years ago
Bonett's claim is narrowly about cars and direction, not about magnitude. NSO Motor Vehicles News Release NR-085-2026 (Table 2 — newly licensed motor vehicles by category) confirms the direction: fewer passenger cars were registered in 2025 than in 2023. The size of the reduction is small — about one fewer car per day — and the path was not a clean downtrend. The 'started to fall' framing captures real movement in the right direction; it slightly overstates the sharpness of that movement.
The headline number — passenger cars only
Restricting the data to the NSO 'passenger car' category to match the literal 'cars' reading of the claim:
Three observations matter for the verdict:
- 2025 is below 2023. 14,104 vs 14,433. The direction Bonett describes is real.
- The fall is small. 329 cars across two years, or about one fewer car registered per day. On a base of ~40 cars/day, that is a 2.3% reduction.
- The path was not monotonic. 2024 was actually the peak year (15,071 cars, 41.3/day). The 'falling' movement starts only in 2024→2025, not 2023→2024.
Why the verdict is Mostly True rather than True
The strict direction-claim test passes — 2025 had fewer car registrations than 2023. The size of the fall does not.
- Size: 2.3% across two years. On a ~40 cars/day series, this is roughly one fewer car/day registered. Within the normal year-to-year variation a market this size sees.
- Sharpness: the word 'started to fall' implies a meaningful or accelerating downtrend. A 2.3% two-year reduction with 2024 sitting above 2023 in between does not deliver that.
- Direction confirmed. Bonett did not overstate to the point where the verdict would flip — he correctly identified that the running rate moved down.
Direction right, magnitude soft. That is the Mostly True landing on Spunt's scale.
So is the claim accurate?
Yes — directionally. Fewer cars are being registered per day in 2025 than in 2023. The size of the reduction is small (about one fewer car/day, 2.3% across two years) and the 2025 weakness is concentrated in a single quarter, with the rest of 2025 running close to the 2023-2024 norm. Bonett's framing implies a sharper trajectory than the data carries, which is what holds this back from a clean True.
Verdict: Mostly True.