24% Plugin Vehicle Share in Europe

(What a difference a year — and subsidies — makes. A year ago, we were celebrating a record month and 25% BEV share. Now … not so much.)

While the overall automotive market had a positive year (+14%), December saw it falling — it was down 4% compared to December ’23 — which was its first drop in 16 months. This was influenced by the German market, which fell a significant 23% in December, no doubt influenced by the economic clouds on the horizon and the chaotic EV subsidies cut in the middle of the month.

Twelve months ago, we were celebrating a record month, which had been influenced by EV subsidies cuts in a number of countries. This time, it is the other way around — Europe’s passenger plugin electric car market had a historic drop in December, with its 294,200 registrations quite far from the 413,500 registrations of a year ago. That is a massive 29% drop YoY, which is the worst drop in over 10 years. This time, both plugin powertrains were hit with falling sales. BEVs were down 25% to 205,922 units, which is — if we exclude the COVID-related drop of April 2020 — the first time BEVs were in the red since December 2016! PHEVs performed even worse, dropping 36% in December, to some 88,000 units, their worst performing month since June 2019, when they also saw sales drop by 36%.

Despite this horrible result in December, the full year performance wasn’t that bad. Plugins progressed by 16% to over three million units, which allowed them to grow slightly faster than the overall market, which in the same period grew by 14%.

These results influenced the market share numbers, with the December plugin vehicle share ending at 28% share, far from the 38% of the previous December. In the BEV field, things were less depressing, as the December 2023 result (20%) wasn’t so far from what happened a year before (25% in December 2022).

Looking at the full year, the 2023 PEV share ended at 24% (16% BEV), which is only a slight improvement over the 2022 results of 23% (14% BEV). Still, growth is growth, right?

And 2022 also had a small jump from the 19% share of 2021 (10% for BEVs alone), so one say that to find another significant rise, one has to go back to 2021, when it jumped from the 11% of 2020 to 19% PEV share.

With 2024 being another year of weak growth, with the German EV market in particular still recovering from the end of subsidies, I think we can only expect a significant rise in market share in 2025. I expect the plugin share will end the year above the 33% mark next year.

For comparison, the Chinese market already ended 2023 at 37%….

Looking at the BEV vs. PHEV breakdown, plugin hybrids’ loss of influence is becoming ever more apparent. While PHEVs ended 2021 and 2020 with the same share of the plugin market (46%), 2022 saw that number reduced significantly, to 39%, and 2023 saw its share reduced even further, to just 33%. Expect the PHEV drop to continue in 2024, to less than 30% share. It could even be the case that we will see a 100% BEV top 20 in 2024! Is that asking too much?

In December, Tesla won #1 and #2, followed by the MG4, the 2023 CleanTechnica Car of the Year award winner in Europe. A prelude of how 2024 will look?