In 2024, 1.45 million new battery-only electric passenger cars were registered in the EU, a decrease of 6.1% compared with 2023 (1.55 million). This brought the total number of battery-only electric cars to 5.87 million, representing an increase in the fleet of 32.4% compared with 2023 (4.43 million).
This information comes from data published by Eurostat. The article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article on passenger cars in the EU.
Source datasets: road_eqr_carpda, road_eqr_zev
The share of battery-only electric cars among all new registrations fell to 13.6% in 2024, 1.0 percentage point (pp) below the level in 2023 (14.6%). This share had remained below 1% until 2018, but grown notably in recent years, rising to 5.3% in 2020, 9.0% in 2021 and 12.1% in 2022.
While plug-in hybrid cars recorded a decline of 6.5%, similar to battery-only electric passenger cars, the total number of new hybrid passenger cars increased by 12.7% in 2024 (3.95 million) compared with 2023 (3.50 million).
The highest shares of battery-only electric cars in new registered cars were found in Denmark (51.3%), Malta (37.7%) and Sweden (34.9%). By contrast, the lowest recorded shares were in Croatia (1.8%), Slovakia (2.4%) and Poland (3.0%).
Source datasets: road_eqs_carpda, road_eqs_zev
Regarding other types of new battery-only electric vehicles, which are much fewer than new battery-only electric passenger cars, the number of new heavy lorries increased the most from 2023 to 2024, by 39.7%, followed by road tractors (+35.5%) and motor coaches and buses (+28.2%), while there was a decrease for light lorries (-10.8%). Despite some significant increases, their total number showed a decrease of 6.8% compared with 2023.