Electric cars are increasingly popular. It is a clincher, but one that can now be substantiated with figures at European level. Trade association European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) releases figures showing that 538,772 fully electric cars were sold in the European Union last year, an increase of 117.4 percent from 2019.
ACEA has received the European sales statistics from the last quarter of last year, which means that the trade association was also able to list the figures for the whole of 2020. This shows, among other things, that more than twice as many EVs were sold in the European Union last year than in 2019. The total number of electric cars sold last year amounted to 538,772 units, an increase of 117.3 percent compared to 247,854 EVs marketed in the EU in 2019. Plugins are also more popular than ever. Last year, 507,059 plug-in hybrids were sold in the EU, a good 262 percent more than the 139,954 plug-in hybrids that found owners in 2019.
In addition, more conventional hybrids were sold in 2020 than in 2019. In the European Union, 1,182,792 hybrids found an owner last year, almost 60 percent more than the more than 740,000 units registered in 2019. While petrol-powered cars still account for the bulk (47.5 percent) of sales in the EU with 4,713,778 units sold last year, fewer were sold than in 2019 (-37.3 percent). The smaller percentage decrease in diesel cars is striking. 2,778,817 units found European owners last year, 32.3 percent less than the 4,106,951 self-igniter cars sold in 2019. The share of diesel cars was 28 percent last year.