- Last updated: August 1, 2022
18 Plug-In Friendly Countries by Market Share
#18 United States 2.1% (2019*)
#17 Canada 3.0% (2019*)
#16 Belgium 3.2% (2019*)
Belgium may be a small country, but i’ts home to over 11 million people. Unlike some of its neighboring countries which are adopting EV’s at a much higher rate, Belgium is slightly behind (for now). The government ended its incentives in 2012, resulting in absolutely no financial incentives to buy these electric cars.
Despite that, in 2016 there were 4,368 electric cars on the road. In 2017 the number increased to 6,552 and further to 9,244 in 2018.
According to data collected, Belgium accounts for 2.50% of the market share.
In 2019, the market share has jumped by an additional 0.7% to 3.2%. While 2020 number are not in, like many other countries that saw an exponential growth between 2019 an 2020, Belgium could have already surpassed 10% in 2020.
#15 China 5.4%
#14 Switzerland 5.5% (2019*)
#13 Ireland 7.4%
#12 Austria 9.5%
#11 United Kingdom 10.7%
#10 France 11.2%
France is right behind Portugal when it comes to plug-in sales in 2020. France managed to have 11.2% of all vehicle sales to be plug-in vehicles. If you think thats small for a fairly populated country, maybe so. However, comparing the number to 2019 of 2.8%, that is a SIGNIFICANT jump.
I have no doubt by the end of 2022, France will crack the 15% market share number.
#9 Portugal 11.6%
#8 Germany 13.5%
#7 Hong Kong 14.0%
#6 Denmark 16.4%
#5 Finland 18.1%
#4 Netherlands 24.6%
#3 Sweden 32.2%
#2 Iceland 55.0%
Who would-of thought Iceland would be NUMBER TWO on this list?
This island country has a very an impressive 55.00% market share (as of March 2020). For a country with less than a 400K people, they are treating electric and plug-in hybrid cars exceptionally well. Per capita in 2017, the country had 2,990 plug-in vehicles registered, up 157% from previous year.
If you’re wondering how the country can have such a high jump in plug-in vehicle registrations, its because of the government.
Tax incentives and HUGE savings (compared to buying gas and diesel cars) is what’s leading people towards the EV route.
#1 Norway 74.7%
MOST Improved and LEAST Improved Countries
From the entire list of countries listed above, the country that improve the MOST from 2019 to 2020 was Iceland at +22.4%. A close second was Sweden at +20.8%, and number three was Norway at 18.8%.
The least-improved countries seemed to be China at a small +0.5%. While the numbers look small, the country of China still has the largest stock of plug-in passenger vehicles in the world at over 4.5 million.