Electric car – Photo by Ernest Ojeh on Unsplash
(LUXEMBOURG) – Trade of electric & hybrid cars continued its strong rise in 2022, according to the EU’s statistics agency Eurostat, with an increase of 35 percentage points compared with 2017.
Eurostat’s figures show that between 2017 and 2022, the trade of electric and hybrid cars in the EU registered a staggering increase. The change in exports was also clear with a 24 pp increase in 2022 (26% of the total number of cars exported) from 2017 (2% of the total).
Non-plug-in hybrid cars went from 6% of total car imports and 0.4% of car exports in 2017 to 21% and 13%, respectively, in 2022. Full electric cars represented 15% (+14 pp compared with 2017) of car imports and 9% of exports (+8 pp) in 2022, plug-in hybrid cars represented 7% (+6 pp) of car imports and 4% of exports (+3 pp).
In terms of value, in 2022, the EU spent a total of 37.0 billion on imports from extra-EU countries on hybrid and electric cars, an increase of 27%, compared with 2021 (29.1 billion). Imports of non-plug-in hybrid cars were worth 16.0 billion, followed by full electric cars (12.6 billion) and plug-in hybrid cars (8.4 billion).
Exports of the same products to extra-EU countries amounted to 59.1 billion in total value, +41% compared with 2021 (42.0 billion). Non-plug-in hybrid cars exports totalled 28.5 billion, while exports of full electric cars reached 22.4 billion and plug-in hybrid cars 8.1 billion.
Non-plug-in hybrid cars was the largest category traded among the hybrid and electric cars. The top 3 extra-EU countries from which the EU imported non-plug-in hybrid cars were the United Kingdom with 3.4 billion (corresponding to 21% of the total imports for non-plug-in hybrid cars), followed by Japan (2.8 billion) with a percentage share of 18% and Türkiye (2.5 billion) with a 15% share.
The top 3 main extra-EU countries for exports were the United States (8.7 billion) with a percentage share of 30%, followed by the United Kingdom (4.5 billion) with 16%, and Norway (4.3 billion) with 15%.
Statistics Explained article on international trade in hybrid and electric cars
