One-in-four new car sales in Europe are plug in electric vehicles

Australia loves to tout its world-leading status on rooftop solar uptake – and with PV panels installed on roughly of one in four of all homes at the end of last year, it’s worth bragging about. But when it comes to uptake of low-emissions vehicles, Europe has us well and truly beat.

New data reveals that close to one-quarter of the new passenger car market in Europe in August was made up of a mix of of BEVs (fully electric passenger cars), PHEVs (plug-in hybrids), and externally rechargeable new passenger car registrations.

The data, published monthly in the European Electric Car Report by Schmidt Autotmotive Research shows that the 18 market West European region saw combined BEV/PHEV volumes reach 152,000 units in August, or 24.2 per cent of the total new passenger car market in that month – that’s one in four new cars, for those playing at home.

In Australia, by comparison, more than 8,600 electric vehicles were sold in the first six months of the year, up from a total of 6,900 for the entire year in 2020. It’s getting close to 2 per cent of overall new car sales, or one in 50. Not good enough.

Another interesting EU data point from the latest month is that pure electric models outnumbered plug-in hybrids for just the second month this year, a feature that is being partially attributed to an early shipment of Chinese-made Teslas that arrived in Europe in August.

Boosting Tesla’s share in the EU new passenger car market – which the data says has risen to 13% of the new BEV market – has been the addition of around 3,300 Tesla Model Ys, which arrived on the scene in Europe for the first time in August.

And while the global semiconductor shortage has undoubtedly affected worldwide deliveries of Teslas, VW data on the daily production rate at its all-electric MEB plant in Zwickau, Germany, has revealed no such disruption, with the daily rate rising towards the planned 1,500 unit mark.

For the year, the data shows that the 1.32 million new plug-in electric cars registered between January to August 2021 across the 18 market EU region has resulted in them accounting for 18% of the total 7.36 million new passenger car market during the same period, up from 12.4% in all of 2020.