Market researchers have discovered that the market for electric cars got a good boost in 2020.
There were some shifts in the global market for electric cars last year. The share of cars with purely battery-electric drives, fuel cells and plug-in hybrids in the global market as a whole rose from 2.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 5.8 percent a year later, according to the AlixPartners management consultancy. The sum of the electric range of all e-cars sold has doubled to 386 million km.
Volkswagen was able to overtake Tesla in the number of electric vehicles sold for the first time in the last quarter of 2020 with 192,000 . In terms of electric range sold worldwide, Tesla remained the front runner in the fourth quarter of the previous year with around 100 million km. Volkswagen achieves 45 million km due to the higher proportion of plug-in hybrids in Europe. The management consultancy weights this lower in the cumulative reach.
In Europe, 1.4 million electric cars were registered in 2020, 0.1 million more than in China, which had been the frontrunner in sales of e-cars for years, as AlixPartner announced .
China remains the country with the greatest electric range, namely 183 million km, followed by the USA with 48 million km. By far the greatest increase could be recorded by the German market: In the past twelve months, the range in this country has more than quintupled to 38 million km.
20 percent in Germany
AlixPartners sees massive government subsidies, the increasing acceptance of e-cars in the population and the resulting greater electrification of the vehicle fleets of European manufacturers as reasons for this. A key driver for structural change is the EU-wide limitation of CO 2 emissions. The impending fines urged manufacturers and suppliers to convert their fleets.
Norway remains the country with the largest share of e-cars sold worldwide, at 68 percent at the end of 2020. In addition to Scandinavian countries, the first six countries in Europe also include the Netherlands with 41 and Germany with 20 percent.
AlixPartners reports that it evaluates publicly available data, especially from IHS Markit and EV-volumes, which show global sales figures for “light vehicles” and electric vehicles. The electric ranges of the vehicles are based on data from EV volumes and published information from the automobile manufacturers.
