Market Share Of Electric Vehicles — Changes In 8 Top Countries

June 27, 20213 years ago Zachary Shahan 0 Comments

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It’s been a few months since we looked at electric vehicle market share trends in several top markets, so it’s time for another deep dive. Six static charts are included in this article with commentary before them, to examine EV market share changes from 2020 compared to the first 5 months of 2021.

On the bottom of this article are extra interactive charts (note that they tend to work much better on real computers, not phones). Six of those charts are like the ones within the article but have extra bars in the middle for May market share. There’s also one extra chart that focuses in on each country individually, with a toggle button to change between the countries.

One more important note is that electric vehicle market share tends to rise through the year. It should get notably higher from here on out in 2021, so expect the light blue bars to grow in future reports.

On to the charts.

Fully Electric Vehicles

To start with, we’re looking at market share of 100% electric vehicles in 7 top countries, but excluding country #1 — Norway — because it’s hard to see the trends in other markets when you include the Norwegian behemoth. You can see that pure-electric vehicle market share grew strongly in Germany and China so far this year; grew a little bit in the UK, Sweden, and France; declined a little bit in Switzerland; and declined drastically in the Netherlands after an enormous peak in 2020 that was superpowered by certain policies.

The following chart is the same thing but with Norway added. As noted above, Norway is a beast, which makes all the other trends seem minimal. As it turns out, BEV market share has just creeped up so far in 2021, but it is at an impressive 54.9%, compared to 54.3% in 2020. In May, its market share was 60.4%.

Market share changes in the other countries (which you can also find by hovering over bars in the interactive charts on the bottom of this article) are as follows:

Germany

2020 — 6.7%
Jan–May 2021 — 10.3%
May 2021 — 11.6%

Sweden

2020 — 9.6%
Jan–May 2021 — 10.2%
May 2021 — 16.2%

China

2020 — 5.1%
Jan–May 2021 — 8.3%
May 2021 — 9.4%

Netherlands

2020 — 21%
Jan–May 2021 — 7.9%
May 2021 — 13%

2020 — 6.6%
Jan–May 2021 — 7.5%
May 2021 — 8.4%

France

2020 — 6.7%
Jan–May 2021 — 7.1%
May 2021 — 8.2%

Switzerland

2020 — 8.2%
Jan–May 2021 — 7%
May 2021 — 10.2%

As you can see, the May results are better than the January–May results for all 7 of those countries, as well as Norway.

Plugin Vehicles (Full Electric + Plugin Hybrid)

Looking at overall plugin vehicle trends, the story looks a little bit brighter. Market share in several countries rose faster than market share of BEVs rose, and the Netherlands didn’t have nearly as bad of a drop.

Adding Norway in, it’s still the same story, with Norway also seeing its plugin vehicle share grow much more than its BEV share grew in the first 5 months of this year compared to 2020 as a whole.

The next two charts show the same as above sets of charts but all combined. Seeing the difference between BEV market share and overall market share, you can eyeball the role that plugin hybrids play in these different markets.

I won’t comment on most of the interactive charts, but this first one is particularly interesting because it shows the long-term market share trends in each of these countries. The 2021 chart, though, being immature, is not continuing the trend perfectly. The second half of the year will indeed see much higher EV sales and EV market share. The first 5 months will not be representative of the year. Just expect that last bar in each chart to climb through the end of 2021.