According to figures from Schmidt Automotive Research, Western Europe saw a new record number of registrations of battery electric vehicles in December 2020.
Over 100,000 new electrically powered passenger vehicles were registered across the 18-country market-region which includes nations like Norway, the Netherlands, and Germany.
Speaking of which, even though Norway is seen as Europe’s EV utopia, it was bested by the Netherlands, where BEVs made up a greater proportion of all new car registrations.
[Read: Meet the 4 scale-ups using data to save the planet]
In the low country, 68.9% of new passenger car registrations were battery powered electric vehicles.
This was 2% higher than in Norway, the world’s first country where more EVs than gasoline cars were sold across the entire year.
Indeed, reports yesterday confirmed that, across all of 2020, 54.3% of all new cars sold in Norway were battery electric vehicles. In 2019, that figure was 43.4%. A decade ago, it was just 1%.
Whilst the Dutch might have the Norwegians beat in December, it will need to continue this trend if it’s to catch up over the course of an entire year.
To put these figures into context, according to numbers from EV Volumes, the global share of BEV and PHEV vehicles for the first half of 2020 was just 3%.
Projections published by Automotive News early last year suggest that global sales of EVs will outstrip combustion engine sales by 2030.
This isn’t surprising when we consider the fact that governments around the world are taking steps to dissuade citizens from buying fossil fuel cars with subsidies and bans.
In 2025, Norway will ban the sale of new combustion vehicles, and the Netherlands is set to follow in 2030 with similar recommendations.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.