There are now more than a million electric vehicles on European roads, as sales until the end of June 2018 show that plug-in registrations have increased more than 40% compared to last year.
The figures come from EV Volumes, and show that around 195,000 electric cars were sold in the first half of 2018 across Europe. The analysts expect there to be 1.35 million plug-in cars on European roads by the end of the year.
For Europe as a market, there is a closer split between pure-EVs and PHEVs than here in the UK. With around 170,000 EVs on UK roads at time of publication, about two-thirds of those are PHEVs. In Europe, 51% of sales in the first half of 2018 were pure-electric, with the remainder made up of PHEVs – apart from 87 fuel cell models (FCEVs) sold during that time.
The UK is one of Europe’s key electric markets, and sits a little ahead of the region’s market share of 2% for the first half of 2018, and 2.2% for June. That’s compared to the UK’s shares of 2.2% for H1 2018, and 2.7% in June.
Norway still leads the way though, with a market share of 45% for passenger cars in the first half of 2018, and 36,500 plug-in cars sold during that time – and 84,000 anticipated by the end of the year.
Germany is beginning to catch up fast in terms of outright sales though, growing 52% compared to last year, and an anticipated 88,500 registrations by the end of the year. However, due to the larger car market in Germany, market share will still be nowhere near Norway’s.
