Electric car surge among European motorists

New data has revealed an electric car surge among European motorists.

According to analysis by Eurostat, there were 1.5 million new battery electric passenger cars sold in Europe during 2023.

This represents a rise of 48.5% on 2022 and takes the total number of EVs on European roads to 4.5 million.

Meanwhile, the share of pure EVs among new registrations increased to 14.6% last year to continue a sharp upwards trends. In 2018 EVs accounted for less than one per cent of all new sales. It rose to 5.3% in 2020, nine per cent in 2021 and 12.1% in 2022.

Electric car surge

In the UK the figures are even higher. Nearly 315,000 battery electric cars were registered in 2023, a growth of 18% on 2022, while EVs made up 18.5% of new car sales in July to take the total number to 1.19 million.

However, when considering the total European car parc there is still plenty of ground to make up with just 1.7% of all cars in the EU electric.

The data also identified a wide discrepancy between countries. It found that 14 countries in the EU recorded an EV market share of under one per cent, with Cyprus, Greece and Poland at just 0.2%.

In contrast, an electric car surge meant that EVs make up more than seven per cent of all cars in Denmark, with Sweden at 5.9%, Luxembourg 5.1% and the Netherlands at five per cent.