Electric mobility on the rise in Europe: an analysis
The EU's European Green Deal states: Compared to 1990, greenhouse gas emissions must fall by at least 55% by 2030 and net emissions should be reduced to zero by 2050, making Europe the “first climate-neutral continent.” The transport sector currently accounts for around a quarter of emissions — and the trend is rising.
In addition to the shift to more sustainable forms of transport such as rail, electric mobility and the massive increase in the share of clean vehicles in the overall fleet represent a core element for achieving climate goals.
1. Which countries and data were analysed?
One of the main sources of data was the “Road” section of the EU's “European Alternative Fuels Observatory” website. Here, the European Commission provides an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the status and development of road mobility for alternatively powered vehicles in the 27 countries of the EU plus Great Britain, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Turkey and, last but not least, Switzerland.
Among the alternative drive systems, our analysis focused on electric mobility and focused on purely battery-powered vehicles (BEVs) in the passenger car and van (M1&N1) classes. From a current perspective, battery technology represents the most promising alternative drive.
The most important parameters for the analysis were overall fleet size, BEV share, absolute and relative growth in BEVs, expansion of charging infrastructure and corresponding incentives in the individual states, such as tax benefits.
In our core analysis, we focused on what we consider to be the 20 most interesting countries. In other words, very small countries, countries with currently very low BEV populations and/or growth and, from a Swiss perspective, geographically more distant or hard-to-reach regions were not examined in more detail.
2. Current share of purely battery-powered vehicles (BEVs)
For the top 20 countries considered, the average share of BEVs in the total fleet is actually just over 2%. This is surprising at first glance, as the topic of electric mobility is not new. On closer inspection, on the one hand, the differences between countries are very large — Norway has by far the largest share with around 20%, followed by Sweden and Denmark with around 6% and the Netherlands with around 5%. All other countries are between around 0.3% and 3%. On the other hand, hybrid vehicles and in some countries, such as Italy, LPG/LNG vehicles still account for a relatively high proportion of alternative drives. In Switzerland, the current BEV share is around 3.5%.
Nevertheless, there are just under 7 million BEVs so far compared to a total fleet of over 300 million vehicles in the top 20 countries. This means that continued high growth rates are needed and expected, particularly in the major nations, which account for the lion's share of emissions in Europe with their total fleets.
3. Growth figures
The growth of the BEV fleet in the top 20 countries in 2022 and 2023 was just under 45% on average and the share of new registrations was around 16%. Even though the trend has slowed down slightly in recent months, partly due to austerity measures taken by some governments on benefits such as buying an electric vehicle, this is still a significant percentage.
Of course, the basis of such information must also be considered. In other words, if a country has a very low proportion of BEVs or a low absolute number of electric vehicles as a starting value, then a high growth percentage can be deceptive, because absolute growth tends to remain at a low level. It is therefore all the more important that the larger nations in particular show significant growth, which not least in turn further promotes the development of smaller markets.
Norway is once again far ahead in terms of new registrations with almost 75%, followed by Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland with rates of just under 40% to 25%, whereas the major nations such as Germany, France and Great Britain are only 11% to 16%. After all, the BEV fleet growth rate in these countries is 38% to 61%, i.e. closer to or above the average of 45%. Italy and Spain, on the other hand, account for only 3% and 4% of new registrations for BEVs due to their high share of LPG and hybrid vehicles.
4. Charging infrastructure and other influencing factors
There are various factors that influence or favor the decision to buy and use an electric vehicle. This applies to both corporate fleets and private users. Among the most important are certainly tax incentives and benefits, particularly for private users, in addition to aspects such as vehicle range and safety, public charging infrastructure and its expansion. The degree of urbanization also plays a role, for example, whether more is charged at home or publicly. In the future, users in cities should be able to assume that the public charging infrastructure will be well developed, which may further reduce the share of home charging. The financial incentives vary greatly from country to country, but overall they are quite attractive and therefore considered to be correspondingly effective.
The charging infrastructure is now well developed, particularly in major nations, in Western Europe, Italy and Austria, with 4 to 12 fast charging points per 100 square kilometers, which also ensures carefree travel in these regions. There are now up to 800,000 charging points in Europe, and the 1 million will soon be exceeded. autoSense bundles around 475,000 charging points from the various providers in its AutoCharge app in Europe and thus offers coverage of almost 60%, in Switzerland of 95%.
5. The pioneers, the big players and Switzerland
In our analysis, we statistically calculated z-scores for the 10 most important criteria for the top 20 nations and added them up to an overall score with a defined weighting.
The pioneers in electric mobility are certainly nations such as Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Belgium.
If the major nations with their large fleets and thus their greater influence on overall emissions are weighted higher, Germany, France and Great Britain are ahead in the overall analysis, and Italy and Austria are also in the top 10.
And Switzerland doesn't have to hide either: with good growth rates and a well-developed charging infrastructure, it is in a range of 5th place by comparison.
