Summary
- Volkswagen beat Tesla in European EV sales across the first three months of 2025, data shows.
- Registrations for VW EVs are up more than 150%, while Tesla lost huge ground.
- However, the Model Y and Model 3 remain Europe’s top two most-registered EVs.
Finally data! Fig 2 in your link tells the entire story, I believe.
For the record, my point is about the EU. The idea I’m trying to impress is that respondents to this thread seem to look at EV positioning and penetration globally, but if you’re just looking at the EU that will be very different than North America, and the perspective people keep repeating seems very, very, VERY North American to me.
No wonder that’s the case, because yeah, the differences are huge, as you say. Not just for overall penetration, raging from 90% to 5% of all cars registered in your chart. Also in the types of EVs. Plug-in hybrid goes from 10-ish percent of new EVs in Norway to 75%-ish of all EVs in Romania. That’s a big swing (and some egg on grumpy "plug-in-hybrids-are-no-longer-a-concern guy up the thread).
The spread is also… consistently inconsistent? Northern countries seem to definitely take the lead, but the rest is strange. Why is Portugal so much higher than Spain? Why is Romania plug-in hybrid heaven? Why is there such a sudden break of almost 10 % between the top and the bottom half of the table?
And that’s even before we try to break it down by brand. I bet the Tesla dominance thing is also weirdly spread. Would love to know if there is a correlation with how those two numbers shake out one way or the other.
In any case, thanks for looking that up and being, astonishingly, the first person to actually check their assumptions in this whole thread.