A new report from the European Union’s Joint Research Center has found that the transition from testing + experimentation of electric vehicles in Europe to full-scale commercialization of the technology is now under way.
The very interesting report notes that there’s been a bit of a phase transition underway — with electric vehicle (EV) numbers in Europe rising from 760 in 2010 to over 70,000 in 2014.
During this time, the number of models available has increased tremendously, with the number rising during the 2010–2014 time period from 3 to 30. As a part of that, the number of all-electrics has been rising substantially during this time — with many designed from the ground up as EVs, rather than being simply adaptions from conventional models.
The market share held by EVs produced in the European Union itself also rose substantially — from 30% in 2011 to 65% in 2014. (This is in reference to registered EVs in the region.)
Green Car Congress provides more:
According to the team’s analysis, a total of 153,633 electric cars were registered in the EU from 2010 to 2014. Out of this 151,698 were mass-produced or mass-imported cars and 1,935 were small-series, small number imports and pre-production series cars.
This breaks down to:
- 86,230 BEV
- 67,300 PHEV and REV
- 103 FCEV
The PHEV/REV group breaks down to:
- 50,869 gasoline PHEV
- 12,613 diesel PHEV
- 3,818 REV (specifically, the BMW i3)
Unsurprisingly, the greatest number of EV registrations in the region were in the Netherlands and France for the 2010–2014 time period. Interestingly, the countries with the greatest share of registered EVs on the passenger car market were Estonia and the Netherlands. (Note here that Norway isn’t a part of the European Union.)
As an overall conclusion we can state that indeed the EU seems to currently witness a transition from testing and experimenting with EV towards full scale EV commercialization. Nevertheless, the beginning market deployment is still dependent on support policies and vulnerable to changes in such support. For the coming years it will be important to accompany EV market deployment with carefully designed policy measures that provide certainty and are consistent and coherent across the EU. These can then be gradually reduced when further cost reduction for EV kicks in and EV become a regular choice option for the mainstream market. Support measures should be based on technology neutral criteria, such as CO2 and other pollutant emissions, or energy efficiency.