Electric cars are on the brink of mass popularity

josh jackman
Written By
Published on 29 January 2021

Electric vehicles are on the fast track to mass popularity – and Europe is at the forefront.

In 2020, global sales of electric cars increased by 43%, despite overall car sales dropping by 15%, according to Swedish automotive consultancy EV-volumes.com.

Electric vehicles reached the tipping point in Norway, where they made up 54.3% of the new car market – and many other European countries are set to follow.

woman holding electric car charger

The continent saw a 20% decline in overall vehicle sales in 2020, but the electric vehicle market didn’t just survive; it thrived. There were 1.395 million electric vehicles sold in Europe throughout 2020.

That represented a whopping 137% increase on figures from 2019, when people in Europe bought 607,000 fewer electric vehicles than in China.

Understandable, right? After all, there are almost twice as many people in China as in Europe. Except that in 2020, Europe bought 58,000 more electric vehicles than China.

Despite COVID-19 hitting the economy hard, prompting rising unemployment and severely reduced incomes for many, the UK is following the electric-powered trend.

In 2020, the number of overall UK car sales declined by around 29.4%, according to Autocar. That drop was the biggest decline since 1943, when car plants were reconfigured to produce military supplies for World War Two.

Overall sale numbers reached their lowest level since 1992 – when the UK contained 10 million fewer people. But just like in the rest of Europe, electric vehicle sales soared.

In 2019, 10.7% of all vehicles sold in the UK were powered at least partly by electricity. In 2020, that figure stood at 28.5%.

Sales of battery electric vehicles – which are fully electric, and therefore the most eco-friendly option – grew by 186% in 2020.

We can expect this growth to continue after COVID-19, or even accelerate, as economies recover and more people return to financial stability.

If current trends carry on, the tipping point for the UK could be as little as a few years away.

Written by

josh jackman

Josh has written about and reported on eco-friendly home improvements and climate change for the past four years.

His data-driven work has featured on the front page of the Financial Times and in publications including The Independent, Telegraph, Times, Sun, Daily Express, and Fox News, earned him the position of resident expert in BT's smart home tech initiative, and been referenced in official United Nations and World Health Organisation documents.

He’s also been interviewed on BBC One's Rip-Off Britain, BBC Radio 4, and BBC Radio 5 Live as an expert on everything from renewable energy to government policy and space travel's carbon footprint, and regularly attends Grand Designs Live as a Green Living Expert, giving bespoke advice to members of the public about heat pumps and solar panels.

Josh has also used the journalistic skills he developed at The Jewish Chronicle and PinkNews to investigate and analyse every green government grant in existence, and examine the impact on the climate of cryptocurrency, Glastonbury Festival, and the World Cup.

You can get in touch with Josh via email.

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