The perfect storm leads to 90,000 BEVs joining West European roads in September

The West European passenger car market, which includes the original EU member states prior to the 2004 enlargement plus EFTA member states Norway, Switzerland and Iceland, witnessed pure electric BEV new car registrations hit a new monthly record in September and destroying all previous records, (previous record 53,000 July 2020) in the process. According to exclusive data published in the next edition of The European Electric Car Report, thanks to a perfect electrically filled cyclone hovering over Western Europe in September, the combination of key factors contributed to the market just failing to achieve 0.1 million BEV deliveries in a single month. Debuts from new volume models such as the Volkswagen ID.3, the regular end of quarter Tesla European delivery bounce, the UK registration plate changeover month (largest European BEV volume market in September) – likely benefitting from pent up EV demand thanks to the change to the benefit in kind boundaries benefiting BEVs in April –, and the push from manufacturers scrambling to baton down the CO2 hatches in order to meet 2020 EU CO2 compliance before a potential second corona lock-down arrives, witnessed 7.5 per cent of all new passenger cars joining European roads being pure electric models in September. 90,000 pure electric BEV passenger cars were registered across Western Europe during September according to the report's – still provisional – data. This culminated in the market reaching over 400,000 BEV registrations during the opening three quarters of this year and resulted in the market surpassing last year's full year volumes (354,000) with 3 months of the year still remaining.

The perfect storm lead to West European BEV volumes just failing to reach 100,000 units in September

With the 12-month rolling total driving past 0.5 million units in the period from October 2019 to September 2020, the European Electric Car Report's adjusted forecast from March 2020, remains at 556,000, or just over 5 per cent (Jan-Sep: 5.3%) of an expected 11 million total market. CO2 average emissions across the key regional markets also fell correspondingly, with individual manufacturer CO2 targets now appearing more of a reality than ever before, as this report has long since predicted.

This is just a summary of the European Electric Car Sales Monthly Market Intelligence Report which is published on a monthly basis and are available here.