16 February 2020

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.

2 comments:

  1. Scary to see that Poland could not qualify here with a 500.000 annual sales market. That almost seems like a ban on electric cars :)

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    Replies
    1. Poland was about 1,500 so a tiny fraction of the total sales.

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