The fact that the electric car market in Europe was no longer growing as dynamically as in previous years had become apparent over the course of 2024. With more than 1.4 million new electric cars in the EU, sales actually declined slightly. Nevertheless, the industry association ACEA reports more new electric cars than new diesel cars in its annual statistics.
Specifically, there were 1,447,934 new BEV cars in 2024, according to the ACEA. This is 5.9 per cent less than in 2023, when there were still over 1.5 million new battery electric cars. In addition, there were 758,944 new plug-in hybrids at the EU level, which is 6.8 per cent below the previous year’s figure.
However, if the EFTA states (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) and the United Kingdom are also included, the market development in Norway (+9.4 per cent for BEVs) and the UK (+21.4 per cent for BEVs) means that the number of all-electric cars in 2024 is only 1.3 per cent below the previous year – at 1.99 million vehicles. However, plug-in hybrids will only be brought forward slightly by the development in the UK, where the decline will fall to 3.9 per cent or 952,058 hybrid vehicles.
This shows how differently electromobility has developed in the individual markets. With its significant growth to 381,907 new BEVs, the United Kingdom has even overtaken Germany – here the ACEA (like the KBA) reports 380,609 new BEVs, 27.4 per cent below the previous year. This means that Germany remains ahead in the EU, but has to admit defeat to the British in Europe. In France, new electric vehicle registrations fell by 2.6 per cent to 290,614 vehicles, while the third to fifth places made significant gains: The Netherlands came in at 132,166 BEVs (+16 per cent), Belgium even increased by 36.9 per cent to 127,703 BEVs (making it a six-digit country for the first time), followed by Norway in fifth place with 114,396 new electric cars. On the other hand, Sweden, still one of the top countries in 2023, fell back into the five-digit range last year – it fell by 15.9 per cent to 94,333 new electric cars.
A look at the annual statistics shows that there was no doubling of new registrations in 2024. In 2023, countries such as Belgium (93,285 new BEV registrations, +148 per cent), Denmark (62,759 BEVs, +104 per cent) and Portugal (36,390 BEVs, +102 per cent) recorded growth of more than 100 per cent. All of these countries continued to grow solidly in 2024 (Belgium by the aforementioned 36.9 per cent, Denmark by 42.2 per cent and Portugal by 14.7 per cent), but in 2024, small Malta achieved the highest growth in electric cars with an increase of 90.5 per cent. But ‘only’ from 1,515 to 2,886 new registrations.
Across all drive types, the car market in the EU grew slightly by 0.8 per cent to 10.6 million new cars. This also means that, with a market share of 13.6 per cent (2023: 14.6 per cent), battery electric cars remain the ‘third most popular choice of buyers’ for the year as a whole, as the ACEA states. Ahead of electric cars are petrol-only cars with 33.3 per cent and hybrids with 30.9 per cent – although the ACEA combines full and mild hybrids in its statistics. An unspecified proportion of these 30.9 per cent are therefore only electrically assisted, but cannot even drive short distances electrically.
This also means that electric cars are ahead of diesel for the second time in a row after 2023, with new registrations in the EU falling by 11.4 per cent to 1.27 million vehicles – including EFTA and the UK, this is even 11.8 per cent below the previous year. Petrol vehicles also fell by 4.8 (EU) or 6.8 per cent (EU+EFTA+UK), but with 3.54 million vehicles it remains the strongest drive type.
However, it has to be said that petrol cars are still the strongest drive type. With increasing hybridisation (and stricter CO2 fleet limits in 2025), things are likely to get tight for petrol engines this year. By the end of 2024, hybrids had already overtaken petrol engines for four months in a row – with a 33.6 per cent market share in December.
The ACEA also publishes statistics by manufacturer for 2024, but does not differentiate between drive types – meaning that no statement or ranking can be made for manufacturers that offer different drive types. The largest manufacturers are the VW Group (2.84 million new vehicles, +3.2 per cent) ahead of Stellantis (1.74 million, -7.2 per cent) and the Renault Group (1.17 million, +1.9 per cent). As SAIC and MG Motor also sell hybrids in the EU, Tesla is the only purely electric car manufacturer in the list – with 242,945 new registrations in the EU, 13.1 per cent less than in 2023.