1.5 million new battery-only electric cars in 2023

In 2023, 1.5 million new battery-only electric passenger cars were registered in the EU, bringing the total number to 4.5 million. This represents a 48.5% increase compared with 2022 when the total number was 3.0 million.

The share of battery-only electric cars among new registrations reached 14.6% in 2023. This marks a continuation of the rapid increase in the adoption of electric vehicles in the EU. This share of battery-only electric cars in new registrations remained below 1% until 2018, but has grown notably over the past 4 years, rising to 5.3% in 2020, 9.0% in 2021, 12.1% in 2022 and 14.6% in 2023.

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 and road_eqr_zevpc

When it comes to the stock of passenger cars, on 31 December 2023, battery-only electric cars accounted for 1.7% of all cars in the EU, with noticeable variations among EU countries.

In Denmark, battery-only electric cars made up 7.1% of all passenger cars. Similarly, high shares were observed in Sweden (5.9%), Luxembourg (5.1%) and the Netherlands (5.0%). 

Conversely, 14 countries recorded shares below 1%, with the lowest shares recorded in Cyprus, Greece and Poland, each at 0.2%.

Source datasets: road_eqs_carpda and road_eqs_zevpc

For more information

• Statistics Explained article on passenger cars in the EU
• Thematic section on transport
• Database on transport
• Webinar on transport statistics

Methodology note

The shares of battery-only electric cars in all passenger cars for the EU, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, France, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia are Eurostat estimates. Portugal data is provisional.

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