Pure EVs show huge volume increase in Europe

Automotive market research firm JATO has reported a strong performance of pure electric vehicles (BEVs) in its February figures from the European market.

Although their market share remained marginal at 1.9%, their volume increased by a huge 92 per cent to 20,000 registrations.

BEVs continued to gain traction in markets like Norway, where they counted for 40 per cent of overall registrations, and the Netherlands, where they counted for 7 per cent. Demand also increased by 81 per cent in Germany, which was the largest market for BEVs in February.

This increase can be explained by the introduction of new models – most notably the Tesla Model 3. The hotly anticipated car excelled during its first full month on the European market and became the best-selling BEV.

The Model 3 quickly outsold other big players like the Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe, despite being more expensive and only available for a short amount of time.

Felipe Munoz, JATO’s global analyst, commented: “The performance of the Model 3 is remarkable, given we normally don’t see this kind of result until four or five months after a new car has hit the roads.”

Overall, the European car market registered its sixth consecutive month of decline in February 2019 (1.14 million vehicles were registered). According to JATO, this was largely because February marked a month of uncertainty for many of the bigger European markets, such as Spain, where registrations fell by 10 per cent amongst political turmoil, and the Netherlands, where a change in tax on pure electric vehicles contributed to the 15 per cent drop in overall registrations.

The Swedish and Finnish markets also saw declines of 15 per cent and 11 per cent, respectively, as the two countries continued to struggle to come to grips with the introduction of WLTP.