Electric or hybrid vehicles made up almost half of all new car sales across the European Union according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) led by huge increases in Belgium and Denmark.
New car sales in the European Union rose 14.6% in October to more than 855,000, boosted in part by a big jump in sales of fully electric cars, while hybrid electric vehicles accounted for nearly three of every 10 vehicles sold in the economic bloc.
Sales of fully electric cars rose 36.3% from a year earlier and full hybrid sales were up nearly 39% as the EU recorded its 15th consecutive month of sales growth, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) said on Tuesday (November 21).
The ACEA said fully electric cars made up 14.2% of sales in October, overtaking sales of diesel cars for the third time. As recently as 2015, diesel models accounted for more than 50% of cars sold in the EU, but they accounted for just 12% of sales in October.
For the ten months through October, sales of fully electric cars were up 53.1%.
Electrified vehicles – either fully electric models, plug-in hybrids or full hybrids – accounted for over 47% of all new passenger car registrations in the EU between January and October 2023, up from 42% in the same period last year, the ACEA said.
In October 2023, EU registrations of battery-electric cars increased significantly, growing by 36.3% to reach 121,808 units. Several markets contributed to this expansion with triple-digit percentage increases, particularly Belgium (+147.3%) and Denmark (+100.7%). Following a slowdown in September, Germany – the largest market for battery-electric cars – grew modestly (+4.3%) in October. This brings the year-to-date volume to 1.2 million units, marking a noteworthy 53.1% gain compared to last year and capturing a 14% share of the EU car market over the ten-month period.
New EU registrations of hybrid-electric cars surged by 38.6% in October, propelled by substantial growth in the region’s top three markets: Germany (+57.9%), France (+40.1%), and Italy (+28%). This contributed to a cumulative increase of 29.8%, totalling 2.2 million units sold in the first ten months, representing over a quarter of the market.
Plug-in hybrid electric car sales dropped by 5% year on year to 72,002 units last month. Despite notable increases in Belgium (+70.2%) and France (+34.2%), this was insufficient to offset Germany’s decline (-49%), the largest market for this power source. As a result, the market share of plug-in hybrid cars decreased from 10.2% to 8.4% in October.
