More and more people are choosing to go electric in Europe, not necessarily because they care about the environment, but because it makes sense and involves few compromises. Even in 2025, a year marked by the withdrawal of incentives and slower growth in demand, sales of electric vehicles on the continent have increased.
But countless challenges await manufacturers like Volkswagen, BMW, Renault and many others. From Chinese competition to the arms race, here’s what defined Europe 2025 in the world of electric vehicles and what to expect in 2026 and beyond.
Mazda 6e – Eurocharge 2025
The expansion of public charging networks has made it remarkably easy to find an available and working charger. It’s so much easier to recharge today than it was three years ago and the numbers back it up.
The European Commission reports that there are now more than a million chargers in the European Union. The statistic does not include Switzerland and Norway, which are not part of the EU but have extensive public and private charging networks.
EAFO data reveals that the clear leader is the Netherlands, which has almost 200,000 public chargers, more per capita than any other country in Europe, even though most of them are low-power AC chargers. Norway, a global leader in electric vehicle adoption, has around 30,000 stands (around a third of which are DC fast chargers).
When I drove electric vehicles across Europe earlier this year, I discovered that it wasn’t much harder than driving a combustion car, especially if you’re driving an 800-volt electric vehicle that only requires 20 minutes for an 80 percent recharge.
Renault 5 E-Tech
Even though many European countries have reduced or eliminated incentives, subsidies and tax breaks related to electric vehicles, Europeans still bought 33% more plug-in vehicles through November this year compared to 2024, according to a report published by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, which includes the European Union, Switzerland, Norway and the United Kingdom.
The report estimates growth in plug-in vehicle sales in China at 19%, which equates to more than 11.6 million vehicles, compared to 3.8 million in Europe.
The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), which covers the European Union only, reported that pure electric vehicles accounted for 16.9% of all new vehicle purchases in the EU from January to November, compared to 13.4% during the same period in 2024. That represents 1.66 million new electric vehicles, mainly concentrated in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and France.
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ACEA data shows that sales of electric vehicles in the EU increased by 44.1% in November compared to the same month in 2024, with PHEVs also increasing by 38.4% and non-plug-in hybrids increasing more modestly at 4.2%.
The growing popularity of electric vehicles has led to a sharp decline in sales of pure combustion cars. In France, sales of gasoline cars fell by 32% in the first 11 months of 2025. Across the EU, the decline was 18.6%.
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A growing share of Europe’s plug-in cars comes from China, as brands such as BYD and Geely expand across the continent. A Forbes A report citing Schmidt Automotive Research reveals that the share of Chinese-brand plug-in vehicles in Europe almost doubled in 2025, from 3.4% to 6%, and forecasts further growth in 2026 and beyond.
And if the growth of chargers in Europe seems impressive, that of China is still on another planet. According to China’s State Council, the country had 4.63 million public chargers and 14.7 million private chargers, about 19.3 million in total, as well as an average public grid power of 45.34 kW. China also has the highest charging power, with some new electric vehicles capable of megawatt charging under the right conditions.
Europe, on the other hand, is well over 350-400 kW today – and that’s pretty good, because most cars here can’t handle much more than that anyway. Networks are starting to push higher, however: Ionity has started deploying Alpitronic’s HYC1000 hardware, initially capped at 600 kW instead of the full 1 MW they can deliver.
Eurocharge 2025 Transfagarasán
Looking towards 2025, it is clear that Europeans want to buy electric vehicles, regardless of the incentives. Of course, getting a cheaper electric vehicle with state support is a good thing, but it’s not as necessary now because there are more options at lower prices than before in Europe.
They are much more accessible than five years ago and much better too, even if they are still far from reaching price parity with pure combustion cars. The star of sales in Europe this year has been the Renault 5 E-Tech, which I drove earlier this year. This gave me hope that local automakers still have a fighting chance against China. It sold well, with Renault announcing that it had built more than 100,000 examples in 15 months of production.
Renault is developing an even more affordable small electric vehicle, the Twingo E-Tech. And its budget arm, Dacia, is working on its own version based on the same platform, which promises an even lower entry price.
Although it is easier than ever to buy and own an electric vehicle in Europe and more people are doing so, the growing presence of Chinese manufacturers remains a source of concern for the continent’s domestic auto industry. China has a near-total monopoly on battery production, and a significant portion of the cells and upstream materials for European electric vehicles still come from China.
If this trend continues (and there is no obvious end in sight), Europe could simply trade its reliance on oil (most of which it imports) for a reliance on Chinese batteries for electric vehicles. Europe must therefore first be able to produce electric vehicles that buyers choose over models made in China (and the new wave of next-generation electric vehicles from Western manufacturers is very promising in this regard). Next, it should explore ways to localize the battery and power technology supply chain to limit its dependence on China as much as possible.
What happens in 2026 will be a good indicator of where things will go for the rest of the decade.
