New electric passenger car sales jumped by almost 30% across Europe in the first month of 2024.
New electric cars’ sales rose dominantly among all the categories in January 2024 and provided 11.9% of all the passenger-car deliveries in Europe and the UK.
New car registrations climbed by a total of 11.5% in the EU, EFTA and the UK markets after a 3.8% drop in December 2023.
However, the entire European market, including the UK, saw a 29.3% jump in the sales of electric cars compared to January 2023, while the number of new plug-in hybrid cars grew by 24.4%, and hybrid electric ones increased by 21.4%. Petrol car sales were up by 2.8% but diesel cars dropped by 5.4%.
EVs are, however, still not taking over as the most popular category. Petrol cars are still providing more than one-third of the new passenger vehicles sold, while hybrid-electric passenger vehicles are on the move to take over from them.
Most of the cars were sold by the Volkswagen Group (258,402) in January 2024, followed by Stellantis (183,120) and Renault (92,935). The three of them cover more than 52% of the European and UK market.
Which country has the biggest appetite for EVs?
The four largest markets in the EU, providing two-thirds of the EV market, recorded robust gains. Germany, where most new electric cars were sold (22,474), saw sales flying by 23.9%. Based on the volumes sold, the second biggest market in the EU is France, where sales were up by 36.8% – it was followed by Belgium (+75.5%), and the Netherlands (+72.2%).
New electric car registrations in the UK rose by 31.1% to 20,935.
Non-EU country Norway presented the most impressive jump in sales in this category; a whopping 281.3% compared to January 2023. However, the actual volume sold was 4,717 EVs.
Are petrol and diesel cars still favoured?
The petrol car market is contracting most in Iceland (-65.9%), Estonia (-43.8%) and the Netherlands (-33.6%) compared to last year. However, there were notable increases in key markets such as Italy (+26.7%) and Germany (+16.9%).
Diesel cars are in decline most in Belgium (-45.1%) and Iceland (-44.3%) but also in three of the largest markets: France (-23.4%), Spain (-10.2%) and Italy (-8.7%).
In Germany, however, the market expanded by 4.3%.
