Until 2018, the share of battery-powered electric cars among new registrations remained below 1 percent. Over the past 4 years, the popularity of electric cars has begun to grow steadily. In 2020, share of new electric cars in the total number of new passenger car registrations increased to 5.3 percent, in 2021 to 9.0 percent, and in 2022 to 12.1 percent.
In 2023, 1.5 million new electric cars will be registered across the European Union powered solely by batteries, which accounted for 14.6 percent of all new registrations.
The popularity of electric cars is growing, but not at the same rate everywhere
Last year, there were 4.5 million battery-powered cars on all roads in the European Union, which is 48.5% more than in 2022, when the total number of such cars in the EU was 3.0 million.
At the end of December 2023, electric cars powered solely by batteries accounted for 1.7% of all registered passenger cars in the EU. However, the saturation of electric cars varies significantly between individual EU countries.
Among the EU Member States, the highest share of electric cars in the total number of passenger cars was recorded in Denmarkwhere electric cars powered exclusively by batteries accounted for 7.1 percent of all passenger cars. High shares were also recorded in Sweden (5.9%), Luxembourg (5.1%) and the Netherlands (5.0%).
On the other hand 14 countries recorded a share of electric cars below 1 percent, with the lowest shares recorded in CyprusIn Greece and in Poland, where electric cars accounted for just 0.2 percent of the total number of cars on the roads.
The most popular engines in Poland
In 2023 alone, a total of 477.3 thousand new cars were registered in Poland, of which 3.6 percent (17.1 thousand) were cars with a purely electric drive. As in the whole of Europe, the number of new electric cars is also systematically growing in Poland. In 2018, only 694 battery-powered cars were registered in Poland, a year later there were 1,464 of them. In 2020, new registration certificates were issued for 3,673 electric cars, in 2021 this number increased to 7,092, and in 2022 to 11.3 thousand.
On the Polish market, as in most EU countries, the highest share of new registrations were petrol-powered cars. In Poland in 2023 300.8 thousand cars with such drive were registered, which constituted 63 percent. newly registered passenger cars. The second most popular the engine was diesel, which accounted for 30.2 percent of new registrations. Last year, 144.5 thousand passenger cars with diesel engines were registered in Poland.
