What European country boasts the highest number of electric cars?

Germany boasts the highest number of battery-only electric cars in the European Union, with 1.41 million electric cars on German roads as of 2023.

According to Eurostat data, France boasts the second-highest number of battery-only electric cars (916,082), followed by The Netherlands (442,409) and Sweden (291,673).

At the other end of the spectrum, sustainable transport is less prominent in Cyprus, where there were just 1,253 battery-only electric cars on the road as of last year, with Malta (4,364), Estonia (5,796) and Latvia (6,369) also boasting low levels of electric vehicles.

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New vehicle registrations

Last year, some 1.5 million new battery-only electric cars were registered in the European Union, Eurostat noted, increasing the total number of said vehicles on EU roads to 4.5 million. This represents a 48.5% rise from 2022, when the total was 3.0 million.

The share of battery-only electric cars among new vehicle registrations reached 14.6% in 2023, reflecting the rapid increase in the adoption of electric vehicles in the EU. The share of EVs has grown significantly over the past few years, from below 1% until 2018 to 5.3% in 2020, 9.0% in 2021, 12.1% in 2022, and 14.6% in 2023.

In 2023, battery-only electric cars accounted for 1.7% of all passenger cars in the EU. However, this percentage was higher in some countries. In Denmark, battery-only electric cars made up 7.1% of all passenger cars, followed by Sweden at 5.9%, Luxembourg at 5.1%, and the Netherlands at 5.0%.

Number of battery-only electric cars registered by EU country, 2023