Sales of electric cars outnumbered petrol-powered ones in Europe in December for the first time, even as Europe loosened rules to allow automakers lenience to pollute more.
But the huge increase in EV sales, led by BYD, was not accompanied by a similar boost in Tesla sales, with the company still seeing huge year-over-year declines in its global sales performance.
December and full-year sales numbers for Europe came out today, published by the European Automobile Manufacturer’s Association (ACEA), with great news for EVs.
Overall auto sales grew by +1.8% over the previous year, though sales have not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
But more importantly for us here at Electrek, EV sales positively boomed in the region, particularly at the tail end of the year. In December, battery electric (BEV) sales were up +51% over the previous December, with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) increasing +36.7% and conventional petrol hybrids increasing +5.8%.
Meanwhile, sales of petrol-only cars dropped by -19.2% and diesel cars dropped by -22.4%.
That year-end 51% boom was enough to add a new feather to the cap of BEVs: outselling petrol-only cars across all of Europe, at least for the month of December. For the past few years, EV sales have been creeping up as petrol-only car sales have been creeping down, and the two finally crossed in the month of December.
Note: that’s the BEV-only share exceeding the petrol-only share. Collectively, BEVs and PHEVs (cars with plugs) accounted for a third of new car registrations, and petrol-powered hybrids accounted for another third.
The numbers are even better when including non-EU EFTA countries (Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein) and the UK. UK, for example, saw a third of new cars being electric in December, a sales level that meets the country’s 2026 goal already (though December is usually exceptionally strong for EV sakes in UK). Including EFTA and UK, BEVs outsold petrol-only cars by 26.3% to 21.7% respectively.
Over the full year in the EU, BEVs made up 17.4% of sales and petrol-only cars made up 26.6%, so the year ended much stronger for EVs than it started.
So, there’s a reasonable chance that next month, gas cars will outsell BEVs again, but the trend is clear – EVs are rising, fossil cars are falling.
And those EVs are being fueled by cleaner and cleaner energy sources, as well. In 2025, wind and solar overtook fossil fuels for electricity generation, even in a country like Germany, which has little sun.
The success of BEVs happened despite the European auto industry lobbying successfully to marginalize its own future by committing further to the shrinking, fossil-powered piece of that pie, and surrendering to overseas competition that is not slowing down in its race towards electrification.
Speaking of overseas competition: the individual brand which saw the highest sales increase over the course of 2025 was BYD, with a whopping +228% full-year sales increase, increasing from 39k to 129k cars sold over the course of the year.
But another overseas brand, Tesla, fared particularly poorly, with a sales drop of -37.2%. This was the highest sales drop of any company, excluding the two sub-brands of Jaguar and Lancia.
Tesla’s sales drop is exceptional given that it is an all-EV brand, and the EV market is rising so rapidly.
One would expect fossil-only brands to do poorly as EV sales rise, but Tesla has bucked that trend, largely due to its bad CEO attempting to orchestrate a white supremacist takeover of the continent. Given what went on the last time someone tried to do that, Europe is understandably not enthused.
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