Sales of new battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in Europe dropped by 16.9% to 160,700 units in December 2023. This was the time BEV sales slowed since the peak of Covid-19 in April 2020.
Analysts attribute the decrease to the -47.6% decline in Germany, which is the largest BEV market in the EU. The contraction is also coming from a particularly robust baseline performance in December 2022.
In terms of volume, 2023 saw a total of over 1.5 million new BEV units, a 37% increase compared to the full year 2022.
New hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) registrations, meanwhile, are up by 26% in December 2023, compared to the same period the year before. While BEV sales dropped by almost half in Germany, hybrid sales went up 38%.
2023 saw a total of over 2.7 million HEV units sold, or a cumulative increase of 29.5% compared to the year before.
In 2023, BEVs made up 14.6% of the market share while HEVs took 25.8%.
Speaking of Germany, they also abruptly decided to drop EV subsidies late last year. This move could negatively impact EV sales in the region within 2024.
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