Good news in Europe: New data shows that electric cars made up almost half of all new passenger car registrations in the European Union this year. While gas vehicles still hold nearly a third of the market, diesel rates took a dive.
The data tallies up sales on “electrified” vehicles, which includes fully electric, plug-in hybrids, or full hybrids. Added up, it’s 47.6% of all new passenger car registrations in the EU from January through November, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) said. That’s up from 43% in the same period last year – a very modest improvement, but still something. Plug-in hybrid electric cars, however, dropped 22.1% to 72,002 units last month.
New car registrations have been on the rise in the EU for 16 straight months, with a year-on-year rise of 13.3% in the registration of electric vehicles. Petrol car registrations are still increasing by 4.2%, while diesel dropped by 10.3%. Countries seeing the largest decline were France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, with diesel cars representing 12.2% of market share, down from 14.5% in the same month last year.
In November, EU registration of EVs grew up 16.4%, with a total count of 144,378 vehicles. Among the biggest markets to add to the pot was Belgium, which saw 150.2% growth. Germany, however, EV sales dropped by 22.5%. Still, despite this, the year-to-date volume reached nearly 1.4 million units, reflecting a substantial 48.2% increase compared to the previous year, representing a 14.2% share of the EU car market in this period, the EAMA reports.
Electrek’s Take
While the percentages have only slightly improved from last year on new car registrations being EVs, the trend is going in the right direction, and it’s nice to see diesel die out. Diesel cars held 50% of the market share in Europe in 2015, compared to 12.2% now. Obviously, electric cars are critical to the European Union meeting its climate goals, so we can only imagine these numbers are going to shift a lot more next year. For 2025, the EU is tightening its restrictions with a 15% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2025 for both cars and vans. From 2030, cars will see a 55% reduction in emissions (relative to a 2021 baseline), and vans will see a 50% reduction. By 2035, all new cars and vans registered in Europe will be zero-emission.