Less than 4 percent of the Dutch vehicle fleet is electric

Of the 28,262 new passenger cars registered in the Netherlands in October, 29 percent had an electric drivetrain. This concerns 8,268 pieces. A considerable number of course, but that also means that the remaining 71 percent of the new cars that hit the road in the Netherlands last month simply had a combustion engine. These percentages are indicative for the whole of 2023. In the first ten months of this year, 315,013 new passenger cars were registered in the Netherlands. Figures that AutoWeek requested from Bovag show that there were 93,229 fully electric cars. This means that EVs have accounted for a share of 29.6 percent of the total number of new passenger cars in the Netherlands so far this year. In other words: more than 70 percent of all new cars registered up to and including October this year simply have a combustion engine. What is the status of the entire fleet in the Netherlands?

Share of electric cars in the Dutch vehicle fleet (2018-2023)

Anyone who sees Tesla’s Model 3, Kia’s Niro EV and Peugeot E-208 sailing past left and right on the highway can hardly escape the impression that a significant part of the Dutch vehicle fleet now consists of electric cars. Nothing is less true. On January 1 this year, the total Dutch fleet numbered 9,233,107 passenger cars. Of these, 340,583 were fully electric. In absolute terms that is a huge number of cars, but it is not that bad. These more than 340,000 EVs represent only 3.69 percent of the Dutch vehicle fleet. If we turn things around, this means that more than 96 percent of the Dutch vehicle fleet simply has a combustion engine. Yet the number of EVs in the Netherlands increased by 35 percent between January 1, 2022 and January 1 this year. After all, on January 1, 2022, there were still 252,635 electric cars in the Netherlands. Compared to 2022, the share of EVs in the total Dutch vehicle fleet has increased by 0.93 percentage points. Between 2021 and 2022, that share increased by 0.72 percentage points. Between 2018 and 2019 by only 0.26 percentage points. The share is therefore growing slowly but surely.

Dutch fleet by powertrain type (January 1, 2023)

Cars with a petrol engine without any electrification make up the majority of the Dutch vehicle fleet. On January 1, 2023, 78.2 percent of passenger cars in the Netherlands (7,224,730 units) had a conventional petrol engine. Remarkably, that number was one percent lower than on January 1, 2022. It is also clear that cars with diesel engines are losing popularity. At the beginning of this year, there were 906,157 passenger cars with a diesel engine in the Netherlands, 11 percent less than a year earlier. Please note: it is possible that some of the diesels are classified under the mild-hybrid heading. The number of cars that use LPG in addition to petrol has also decreased compared to last year. The Dutch vehicle fleet had 98,200 LPG cars on January 1, 2023, one percent less than on January 1, 2022.

Not surprisingly, the share of cars with a hybrid drivetrain to a greater or lesser extent has increased considerably compared to last year (+30 percent, 650,144 units). This increase can mainly be attributed to the sharp increase in the number of cars with a mild-hybrid or plug-in hybrid drivetrain. At the beginning of this year, with 147,511 units, there were 61 percent more mild hybrids in the Netherlands than on January 1, 2022. Please note: this may also include cars with a mild hybrid diesel engine. Between January 1, 2022 and January 1, 2023, the number of plugins increased by 37 percent to 191,657 copies. Full hybrids at the beginning of this year accounted for 305,703 cars, 16 percent more than a year earlier.

Construction of a hybrid passenger car fleet in the Netherlands (January 1, 2023)