Germany will become the first European country to pass the symbolic milestone of one million electric cars on the road. For more than a year, sales have been booming, thanks in particular to numerous government subsidies encouraging people to buy this type of vehicle.
In June alone, sales of all electric cars quadrupled in Germany compared to the same time period in 2020, representing a record 12.2% of all vehicles sold. Plug-in hybrids now account for 11.4% of sales, meaning that nearly one in four cars sold in Germany is now to some extent electric. As a result, the milestone of one million electric cars sold will be passed in July.
These encouraging figures for the country of 83.7 million inhabitants are mainly due to the increase last year of the country’s purchase premium for electric vehicles. Note that the German government’s goal was to have one million electric cars on the road by the end of 2020.
By way of comparison, there are nearly 600,000 all electric and plug-in hybrid cars currently on the road in neighboring France, with a population of 66.7 million. China counts 4.5 million electric cars on the road for a population of 1.4 billion and the United States counts 1.78 million electric cars for a population of 331 million.
