Electric car sales in Europe up by 37% last year

Europe’s appetite for electrically powered cars surged by 37 per cent last year, but still made up just more than half a per cent of the continent’s new car sales.

The news wasn’t all good, though, with lower fuel prices being blamed for a 7.7 per cent drop in electric car sales in the fourth quarter, leading the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association to call for greater policy of government incentives. For that read taxpayer assistance.

Pure-electric vehicle sales rose 57 per cent to 38,495 in 2014, from 24,586 cars in 2013, while sales of plug-in hybrids and range extender electric cars rose 21 per cent to 36,836 from 30,558 in 2013.

While Ireland saw an astonishing 412 per cent growth rate, the total figure still capped out at 256 cars in 2014, with 221 of those pure-electric cars and 35 plug-in hybrids. We're still a long way from the target of 20 per cent of the entire Irish vehicle fleet being electric by 2020.

Pure-electric vehicle

The continent’s biggest pure-electric vehicle consumer was heavily subsided

Norway

, with 18,090 sales, though Norway isn’t an EU member state. Norway has regularly seen Tesla and Nissan’s Leaf leading its monthly sales figures and sales grew 129 per cent in 2014.

France ranked second, with 10,561 electric registrations, followed by Germany (8,552), the United Kingdom (7,416) and the Netherlands (2,982).

The UK saw the biggest increase in new electric vehicle sales in 2014, with its pure-electric sales jumping from 2,719 in 2013 to 7,416 last year. The Brits also had a booming year for plug-in hybrids and range-extender hybrids, with sales jumping from 1,114 in 2013 to 7,945 last year.

But the UK wasn't the biggest consumer of plug-ins in Europe last year, with the Netherlands taking 9,938 cars, followed by the UK, then Germany (4,596), Poland (3,887), Sweden (3,428) and Austria (2,360).

Combined, the pure-electric and plug-in hybrid volumes made the UK the biggest electric market in the EU, though its 15,361 sales were outdone by Norway’s 19,767.

The UK volumes for electrically-boosted cars are helped by £5,000 bonus plus tax exemptions and exemptions from London’s congestion charge. Governments around Europe are following suit, already announcing their latest tricks to swing buyers across to electric cars through financial incentives and support for fast-charging infrastructure.

France is the latest to push higher incentives, with minister of energy Ségoléne Royal announcing a bonus of up to €10,000 for anybody who swaps an older diesel-powered car for an electric one.

Starting in April, the scheme is a techie version of the "cash for clunkers" programme and will benefit the world's largest maker of electric cars, the Renault-Nissan alliance, whose offerings include the Nissan Leaf and the Renault Twizy, Kangoo, Fluence and Zoe. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's also French.

The rebate will bring down the cost of the Zoe from €22,400 in its home market to just €12,400, while the Leaf would drop from €18,090 to €14,390.

“We have to eliminate old diesel cars that are more than 13 years old and have no filters,” Ms Royal said in announcing the scheme. “Measures against these types of polluting cars will make it harder and harder to use them.”

Oddly enough, Renault sounded chuffed by the announcement (despite the French car market being more than 60 per cent diesel), with a spokesman suggesting: “It could help convince buyers to try an electric car.”

Dominated

Renault is the biggest seller of electric cars in Europe – it sold 1,237,606 cars on the Continent last year and only 18,000 of them were electric. That figure was dominated by the Zoe, whose 11,000 sales made it the most popular electric car in Europe. More than half of Renault’s electric sales were in France, which claimed 5,970 of them.

As part of the move, France will also push up the tax on diesel €0.02 a litre to make it on par with petrol and to help fill government coffers, though the government insists that’s not the main reason for the alignment. Paris is looking to ban diesels from the city centre by 2020 because of particulate pollution.

“Sixty per cent of the French population breaths air that isn’t healthy,” Ms Royal said, “so air pollution is a major issue.”

However, government policy intervention isn’t always a guarantee of success. The Netherlands, which has one of the most generous schemes in place of all the European countries, saw its (admittedly high) electric vehicle volumes shrink 42.6 per cent in 2014, with its 12,920 sales down from a high of 22,495 in 2013.