EU e-car registrations surpass 100,000 in 2018
Clean Energy Wire
Registrations of new electric cars in the EU exceeded 100,000 for the first time last year, industry association ACEA says in a press release (in English). According to ACEA, 150,003 purely electric vehicles were registered in the EU in 2018, 50 percent more than in 2017. This figure combined with non-EU states Norway and Switzerland, brings 2018 European e-car registrations up to over 200,000. Norway was Europe’s biggest e-car market with around 46,000 newly registered cars, followed by Germany with over 36,000 – up 44 percent on the previous year. Across Europe, 2 percent of new car registrations were electric cars. At the same time, the share of diesel cars in new registrations fell from 44 percent in 2017 to less than 36 percent in the following year.
The German government had aimed to have 1 million e-cars on the road by 2020 but has already acknowledged the goal is unlikely to be met. As of early 2018, only around 54,000 purely electric cars and 44,000 plug-in hybrids - both of which are counted towards the goal - had been registered in the country, but industry experts say rapid growths mean the target figure could be reached by 2022.
