- New car registrations are on the rise in Europe, especially for EVs.
- In the UK, EFTA, and EU, BEVs had a 23.3% market share in May.
- Sales of major Chinese brands like BYD, Chery, and Geely are rising.
Demand for battery-electric vehicles across Europe (including UK and EFTA) keeps building, and in May they bumped petrol-powered cars down to third among powertrain types, trailing only traditional hybrids. Chinese brands added to the shake-up, logging 121,030 European sales in May, nearly double their May 2025 total and good for a 10.7 percent share for the first time.
When factoring in the UK, EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, as well as the European Union, total new car registrations rose 3.6 percent to 1.15 million units in May. In the EU alone, they were up 3.2 percent to 955,013 compared to May last year.
Read: One in 10 New Cars Sold in Europe Last Month Was Chinese
It’s the surge in demand for EVs that’s really turning heads. Across the EU, 950,521 new battery-electric vehicles were registered in the first five months of the year, giving them a 20 percent market share, just behind petrol at 22.4 percent and well down on hybrids at 37.8 percent.
Fold in the UK and EFTA nations and the BEV share YTD rises to 21.4 percent, a hair behind petrol cars at 22.3 percent. Plug-in hybrids grew too, reaching 460,217 EU registrations through May for a 9.7 percent share, up from 8.3 percent a year earlier.
A Record-Setting May
In May alone, BEVs in the EU took a 21.3 percent share, narrowly behind petrol cars at 22 percent. Widen the lens to the EU, EFTA, and the UK and BEVs actually outsold petrol-only vehicles, claiming 23.3 percent of the market against 21.7 percent for petrol. The split comes down to Britain and the Nordics, where EV uptake runs hottest. Leave those markets out and petrol keeps its nose ahead inside the EU bloc; add them back and the order flips.
The gains clustered in a few markets. BEV sales jumped 75.7 percent in Italy, 55.4 percent in France, and 40.9 percent in Germany.
Tesla did much of the heavy lifting, with European sales nearly doubling in May. The Model Y returned to the top of the BEV charts with 17,183 sales, up 68 percent, finishing as the region’s best-selling EV and its No. 3-selling car overall. Model 3 sales rose 198 percent to 9,566, landing it second among EVs after nearly tripling year-on-year.
As EVs took off across the region, petrol demand fell 18.2 percent through the end of May. Diesel registrations also fell 16.6 percent, leaving diesel with 7.6 percent of new EU car registrations.
France experienced the biggest drop with registrations falling by 36.8 percent. Sales in Spain also dropped by 20.3 percent, and were down 18.5 percent in Germany.
The Chinese Are Coming
Demand for vehicles from China is also on the rise. This year, the Geely Group has sold 176,676 vehicles across the EU, EFTA, and UK, a 6.5 percent increase from the January-May period last year. SAIC’s sales are up 11.6 percent to 141,490, while BYD’s sales have surged 145.2 percent to 135,307.
In May, BYD overtook MG parent SAIC Motor to become Europe’s best-selling Chinese automaker, while Chery finished only several hundred sales behind SAIC.
Chery’s wider brand lineup tells the same tale. Combined sales across its Chery, Jaecoo, Jetour, and Omoda nameplates have soared 316 percent to 122,843 units, while Leapmotor has rocketed 552.9 percent to 43,037. Other Chinese automakers posted sharp May gains as well, Xpeng among them at 138 percent.
