Electric car adoption across markets
Battery-electric share of passenger-car registrations, Lithuania, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Ireland, Czechia, Romania, Luxembourg, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark, latest three years
The battery-electric share is the simplest single number for how fast a car market is electrifying: the number of cars with no combustion engine registered in a month, divided by all cars registered in that month. This page puts the share for every country on the site on one chart and in one table, using exactly the figures shown on the countries' own monthly pages. Plug-in hybrids are listed separately and are not part of the battery-electric share. The United Kingdom publishes by quarter, so its line repeats each quarter's share over the quarter's three months and its row is labelled by quarter; its quarterly page shows the same shares.
| Market | Latest period | BEV share | 12 months earlier | 24 months earlier | Change, 12 months | PHEV share | Counts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Denmark | August 2026 | 85.6% | 68.7% | 54.7% | +16.9 points | 0.1% | New cars |
| Finland | August 2026 | 52.7% | 43.8% | 30.6% | +8.9 points | 10.0% | New cars and used imports |
| Sweden | August 2026 | 44.6% | 33.6% | 35.7% | +11.0 points | 22.1% | New cars |
| Germany | August 2026 | 32.4% | 19.0% | 13.7% | +13.4 points | 12.0% | New cars |
| Netherlands | August 2026 | 31.8% | 20.1% | 21.4% | +11.7 points | 25.4% | New cars and used imports |
| Switzerland | August 2026 | 30.2% | 20.2% | 21.5% | +10.0 points | 11.9% | New cars |
| Luxembourg | August 2026 | 26.0% | 17.4% | 21.3% | +8.6 points | 7.0% | New cars and used imports |
| Ireland | August 2026 | 24.6% | 18.0% | 11.7% | +6.6 points | 16.1% | New cars and used imports |
| United Kingdom | Q1 2026 | 21.8% | 20.3% | 15.1% | +1.5 points | 11.7% | New cars and used imports |
| Belgium | December 2025 | 17.5% | 12.8% | 10.2% | +4.7 points | 7.2% | New cars and used cars |
| Latvia | July 2026 | 12.8% | 8.9% | 5.2% | +3.9 points | 8.6% | New cars and used imports |
| Estonia | August 2026 | 11.0% | 8.0% | 5.6% | +3.0 points | 8.0% | New cars and used imports |
| Austria | July 2026 | 10.7% | 8.2% | 5.9% | +2.5 points | 6.4% | New cars and used cars |
| Spain | July 2026 | 9.6% | 8.3% | 4.5% | +1.3 points | 12.7% | New cars and used imports |
| Czechia | August 2026 | 8.4% | 4.8% | 4.6% | +3.6 points | 5.4% | New cars |
| Lithuania | June 2026 | 5.4% | 5.0% | 2.8% | +0.4 points | 6.1% | New cars and used imports |
| Romania | August 2026 | 3.3% | 2.8% | 1.8% | +0.5 points | – | New cars and used imports |
| Poland | September 2026 | 3.0% | 4.1% | – | −1.1 points | – | New cars and used imports |
Where the markets stand
In the latest period available for each country, Denmark has the highest battery-electric share at 85.6% of registrations (August 2026) and Poland the lowest at 3.0% (September 2026). In between come Finland (52.7%), Sweden (44.6%), Germany (32.4%), the Netherlands (31.8%), Switzerland (30.2%), Luxembourg (26.0%), Ireland (24.6%), the United Kingdom (21.8%), Belgium (17.5%), Latvia (12.8%), Estonia (11.0%), Austria (10.7%), Spain (9.6%), Czechia (8.4%), Lithuania (5.4%) and Romania (3.3%). Counting new cars only, Finland's share is 51.6%, the Netherlands' share is 49.5%, Luxembourg's share is 36.3%, Ireland's share is 34.4%, Belgium's share is 39.1%, Austria's share is 27.4%, Spain's share is 10.8%, Romania's share is 7.0% and Poland's share is 5.8%.
Over the last twelve months the share rose fastest in Denmark, +16.9 points from 68.7% to 85.6%, while it fell in Poland (−1.1 points). The longer view is steadier than any single month: in Denmark the share was 54.7% two years ago, 68.7% a year ago and 85.6% now.
Why the countries are not directly comparable
The biggest difference is what gets counted. Germany's figures come from the KBA's tables of new registrations, so its share is the share of new cars. Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain and Poland count every passenger car that enters the national register in the month, and in the three Baltic countries most of those cars are used imports, typically five to fifteen years old and overwhelmingly petrol or diesel. A used-import-heavy market therefore shows a lower electric share than its new-car buyers alone would produce; Finland and the Netherlands, which also publish a new-cars-only figure, show how large the gap can be. When the same market also has a high share of imported used electric cars, as Estonia and Latvia do with used Teslas, the used-import effect partly cancels out, which is why the new-versus-used split on each country's monthly page is worth reading next to this chart.
The United Kingdom's figures are the Department for Transport's first registrations, new cars and used imports together, but there the imports are only about 2.5 % of the total, so its share is close to a new-car share; what sets it apart is the cadence, a quarter published about three and a half months after it ends.
The second difference is how hybrids are recorded. Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom identify hybrids without a plug as a group of their own — full and mild hybrids together, because none of their sources separates the two; Latvia and Finland record them as petrol or diesel cars, so their "hybrid" figure covers plug-in hybrids only. Poland's hybrid group is the widest of all: CEPiK does not record whether a hybrid has a plug at all — the register's hybrid-power field is empty on every row — so plug-in hybrids sit inside the Polish hybrid figure alongside full hybrids and those mild hybrids whose registrar wrote the electric alternative fuel (a minority; most Polish mild hybrids count as petrol or diesel), and Poland has no plug-in share to show. This does not affect the battery-electric share, but it does affect the picture of what the non-electric part of the market looks like. Third, Lithuania's register keeps only the cars that are still registered, so older months are lower than the official first-registration counts; the electric share is affected less than the totals, because electric cars are newer and rarely exported again within a year, but year-on-year comparisons for Lithuania should be read with that in mind. The methodology page of each country documents the exact rule it uses.
Reading the chart
Monthly shares in small markets are noisy. Estonia registers a few thousand cars a month and Latvia and Lithuania not many more, so one large fleet delivery or one incentive deadline can move the share by several points in a single month and back again the next. The twelve- and twenty-four-month comparisons in the table are a more reliable measure of direction than any two neighbouring months, and the national pages show the same series with plug-in hybrids and full hybrids alongside. Germany's much larger volume makes its line the smoothest, and its share responds visibly to policy changes such as the end of the purchase subsidy in late 2023 and the tax measures that followed. The data behind this page is available as JSON for every market, linked from Lithuania, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Ireland, Czechia, Romania, Luxembourg, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark.