Chart: Which countries have the largest electric car markets?

With Tesla’s meteoric stock market rise in 2020 and several countries and car manufacturers announcing new electric vehicle targets, electric cars have been in the spotlight for a while now. And while they still account for a single-digit percentage of global passenger car sales, several countries, especially across Europe, have made huge strides towards a cleaner future in 2020.

While Norway is by far the country with the highest share of electric cars in total passenger car sales, no country comes even close to China in terms of absolute market size. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), sales of battery electric vehicles (BEV) and plug-in hybrids (PHEV) amounted to 1.00 and 0.25 million in 2020, respectively. That puts China way ahead of Germany (395,000), which overtook the United States in terms of EV sales.

While several European markets saw triple-digit growth in electric vehicle sales last year, industry tracker EV-Volumes puts U.S. growth at just 4 percent. With 328,000 electric vehicles sold, the U.S. is still the third largest market though ahead of France, the UK and Norway.