- Sales of electric and electrified vehicles keep climbing in Europe.
- EVs made up over 15% of all new cars sold in Europe in the first four months of 2025.
- Tesla continues to lose ground on the continent, a region it once dominated comfortably.
The European electric vehicle market keeps growing. Over the first four months of 2025, over 27% of cars delivered with purely electric, with plenty of hybrids and plug-in hybrids in the mix, too. Everyone seems to be reporting higher EV sales, with one major exception.
Tesla sales in Europe are still cratering. The American EV manufacturer saw a 49% decline in the European market (including the European Union, European Free Trade Agreement countries and the United Kingdom). That's despite EV sales climbing by 27.8% in those markets. Electric cars sales accounted for 15.3% of the overall market, up from 12% in the first part of 2024.
With four consecutive months of sales decline in Europe, Tesla’s market share has shrunk from 1.3% to 0.7%. Although its main sales driver, the Model Y, was updated this year and it was received fairly well on the continent, it is no longer among the top-selling EVs. The updated Model Y Juniper remains a great EV, easily among the best in its size and price bracket. Yet, Elon’s political sally seems to have irreversibly tainted the brand’s image, no matter how good its cars still are.
Europeans are now buying more European electric vehicles, like the already very successful Skoda Elroq, but they’re also increasingly turning to EVs imported from China, which are still competitive even with tariffs raising their prices. SAIC-owned MG Motor, which sells the very popular MG4, saw an increase of 24.5% in the number of registrations, but Geely (especially its Zeeker brand) and Geely, which recently unveiled the European version of its popular Seagull, are expected to post strong results this year.
The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) found a clear upward trend for all electrified vehicles, while sales of non-electrified cars are showing signs of slowing down. Hybrid vehicle deliveries were up 20.8%, while plug-in hybrids saw a more modest 7.8% increase. Meanwhile, deliveries of gasoline-powered and diesel vehicles were down 20.6% and 26.4%, respectively. Diesels have just a 9.6% share in Europe and seem to be falling out of favor faster than gasoline, despite once dominating the market.
With Tesla no longer at the top spot in Europe, the continent’s EV scene has never been more competitive. Europeans have a wide choice of different pure EVs to choose from, including an increasing number of affordable options that are genuinely good cars and don’t feel as cheap as their price would suggest. Some EU countries still offer EV purchase incentives, but it looks like we’re now at a point where if they were removed, it wouldn’t cause a crash in the EV market, like some have speculated would happen in the U.S. with President Trump’s new policies that encourage buyers to pick combustion over electric.
