Europe: Hybrid Cars Overtake Gasoline Cars

While electric vehicle sales growth has been much lower than expected in recent months, this is not the case for hybrid cars, which are now the best-selling models in Europe.

The car market of the old continent as a whole is in deep crisis: new car registrations in the EU continued their downward trajectory (-6.1%), according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), with three of the four main markets showing negative results: France (-11.1%), Italy (-10.7%), and Germany (-7%). On the other hand, Spain’s result was good (+6.3%).

In September 2024, hybrid cars reached 32.8% of the market, overtaking gasoline-powered cars (29.8% of the market) for the first time, and this applies to engines that have an electric powertrain but are not plug-in, i.e. that are not recharged externally, increased by an average of 12.5% with a real “boom” in France and Spain.

As for electric vehicles, there was a slight increase in sales, but overall, it was largely below expectations. They now account for 17.3% of new car sales in Europe (+9.8% year-on-year, September 2023 had +14.8%).

Sigrid de Vries, CEO of ACEA, commented on the report by Italian news agency ANSA as follows: “Today’s results show that we are still far from the thriving electricity market that Europe needs. We should see consistent and substantial monthly growth, especially at this crucial time in the development of this technology. Instead, since the beginning of the year, electric vehicle market share is nearly 1% lower than last year, and volumes are still down nearly 6%.”