Using national sources I estimate European EV sales were 56% higher YoY in October, with just under 50,000 sold, a market share of around 4%.

Sales were lower than in September, partly a result of the normal trend of European car sales (the UK’s biggest month is in September due to number plate changes) but also because much of the pent up demand for Tesla Model 3s has now been satisfied.

Indeed given this that sales did as well as they did was impressive and due to an unusually high number of PHEVs being sold (see charts 2 and 3), especially in Germany. I don’t have the model breakdown yet to see exactly why this happened. Normally in EVs big changes are subsidy related, but German subsidy changes came only recently and more likely it reflects German marques having released a lot of new PHEV models recently as they are seen as a good way to meet the WLTP test restrictions.

YTD new EV registrations are up 42%, almost spot on my rule-of-thumb growth forecast of 40%.