BERLIN, GERMANY - An electric car charges at a public charging station on October 29, 2021 in Berlin, Germany.
(Photo : Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
There is no questioning that electric vehicles are the future of the auto industry, especially in the European continent. With the European Union proposing an effective ban for new fossil-fuel cars by 2035, the end is near for diesel and gasoline-powered vehicles.
Car companies may consider fast-tracking their fleets' electrification, with recent data showing electric cars outselling diesel-powered vehicles for the first time in Europe and the United Kingdom. According to data that auto analyst Matthias Schmidt compiled with the Financial Times, car buyers purchased more electric vehicles than diesel for the first time in December 2021.
Europeans purchased more EVs than diesel in December 2021
A total of 176,000 new battery-electric vehicles were sold in 18 European countries during the final month of 2021, a six percent increase compared to the same period the previous year. That was higher than the sales of diesel-powered cars, with only 160,000 of those units sold. Electric vehicles now have a 20 percent market share, while diesel stands at less than 19 percent.
It is important to emphasize that the latest data that the Financial Times published this week focuses on battery-electric cars and not combined figures for electrified vehicles. Car sales of EVs, hybrids, and plug-in hybrids, which comprise the electrified vehicles segment, overtook diesel-powered cars in September 2020.
Diesel became the fuel of choice for most Europeans starting in the 1970s after the OPEC oil embargoes during that decade. European nations gave subsidies for diesel, including a cheaper fuel tax to make its price lower than gasoline. Countries decided to implement this strategy to promote the sale of diesel-powered vehicles with their engines squeezing more miles out of a gallon of fuel than cars with gasoline engines.
That line of thinking changed recently, though, with a growing number of European nations beginning to incentivize purchases of electric vehicles. The EU also introduced a series of regulations regarding emissions, forcing car brands to expedite their development of vehicles with zero-emission. Some European nations even plan to ban cars with internal-combustion engines as soon as 2030.
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Switzerland going electric as well, with high EV sales at the end of 2021
With the way things are going right now in Europe, automakers may go all-electric even before the end of this decade. In Switzerland, 18.3 percent of new registrations were fully electric vehicles from September to November 2021. Those registrations become 28 percent if plug-in hybrids are added to the count. Tesla Model 3 leads the country in EV models sales, with the Volkswagen ID.3 far behind in second place.
Powering the electric movement in Switzerland is its growing charging infrastructure for EVs. A total of 8,497 public charging stations have been installed across Switzerland by the end of 2021. Expect more Swiss people to switch to electric cars in the future, with Switzerland enacting more laws to slash its carbon emission in the coming years.
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