Europe Electric Sales : 2015-19 (by nation)

For this exercise, the top fifteen for 2019 have been listed and a plotting of the progress over the past five years to see how buying habits are developing. In the chart, green is the top country, orange second, purple third and the rest yellow. The 5 Yr column was reached by working out the total five year increase and dividing it by five.

Germany has been in the top three throughout but only in 2019 did it become the largest. The government there held back on offering incentives until the German car industry got its act together. Now that it has, incentives will ensure sales should climb.

The Netherlands had an artificial boost in 2019 but should drop in 2020. Norway has always been at the forefront of electric cars so further increases will be limited until a ban on fossil fuels is implemented. France has dropped out of the top three for the first time but has maintained consistent increases. The UK mirrors France but did have a upturn in 2019.

The rest all follow a pattern that is not dissimilar to each other, except for Denmark that got in early, fell away and is now making a comeback. That shows how incentives need to be consistently maintained as buying electric is for now heavily dependent on them.

Rk	Nation	2019	2018	2017	2016	2015	5 Yr
1	Germany	63,491	36,216	25,178	11,410	12,363	83%
2	Netherlands	62,056	23,998	9,872	4,268	4,148	279%
3	Norway	60,345	46,143	33,080	24,222	25,779	27%
4	France	42,764	31,069	24,967	21,752	17,268	30%
5	UK	37,850	15,510	13,632	10,264	9,934	56%
6	Sweden	15,596	7,083	4,231	2,945	2,962	85%
7	Switzerland	13,190	5,138	4,775	3,295	3,257	61%
8	Italy	10,663	4,999	2,022	1,377	1,452	127%
9	Spain	10,044	5,983	3,920	2,005	1,342	130%
10	Austria	9,261	6,764	5,433	3,826	1,677	90%
11	Belgium	8,837	3,648	2,713	2,054	1,358	110%
12	Portugal	6,883	4,073	1,640	756	645	193%
13	Denmark	5,532	1,745	714	1,312	4,604	4%
14	Ireland	3,444	1,233	622	392	466	128%
15	Finland	1,897	776	502	223	243	136%

Data source: ACEA.

Summary: Electric cars are increasing but without incentives, few will pay much extra for such a vehicle. The additional issue of range will put many off regardless of price (that applies to me). As to how many cars could be supplied with batteries would also ultimately affect production volume. One would think that electric cars would have to be complimented by another fuel option such as fuel cell.