Only Türkiye, Greece or Bosnia are worse

The adoption of electric vehicles in Spain has been slow. Extremely slow considering what goals need to be achieved. We’re not just talking about car registration or a network of charging stations. When you consider the volume of electric vehicles in relation to the Spanish vehicle fleet, the data is alarming.

5%. 5% is considered the threshold to allow an electric vehicle to gain traction in registration. According to experts, as soon as this market share is exceeded, sales of this type of equipment will begin to grow. Last year, up to 23 countries reached this milestone in 2023.

In Spain, Bloomberg He argued that this glass ceiling has already been broken, with a market share of 6.3%. Given that Anfac data back then (August 2023) pegged the market share at 4.91%, it was to be expected that mopeds and electric motorcycles would be added to the bill.

Wall. However, this 5% limit has turned into a wall. If we look at the most recent data, we find that in April last year, 4.14% of cars sold in Spain were electric, while in the same period last year they were 4.74%. Of course, the sales growth of this equipment was 10.45%.

During the year, always according to Anfac, 18,007 electric vehicles were sold in Spain, representing 4.46%. This figure is significantly lower than the 18,041 units sold between January and April 2023. But in addition to this slight decrease should be added an increase in overall sales. Consequently, last year’s market share, with almost identical figures, was already 4.90%.

One of the worst in Europe. These figures are among the reasons why Spain is one of the worst-performing European countries in the entire continent. If we talk about the percentage of electric vehicles compared to the total fleet, then Eurostat has very bad news: we are lagging behind the entire continent.

As you can see in the previous photo, the organization looked at the number of electric vehicles driving in each country relative to the total number of cars, using data from 2022, the most recent year. By country, only Turkey, Greece, Bosnia and Serbia are worse off than Spain.

We are not up to the level of Portugal. When segmenting the data, Eurostat took into account the percentage of cars traveling by region. According to these data, Madrid is the autonomous community with the best penetration rate of electric vehicles in our country, and yet it represents only 0.84% ​​of the total number of vehicles that move around the region.

The data contrasts with Portugal, where 1.17% of vehicles are already electric. Germany, the region with the fewest electric vehicles, has better data than Madrid (0.98%). All French regions are ahead of Madrid. The same thing happens in Ireland, and in Italy there are three regions that are also superior to the capital of Spain.

The best. The map again shows important economic differences between regions inside and outside Spain. In our country, the regions with the highest penetration of electric vehicles are the Balearic Islands (0.53%), Catalonia (0.47%) and Navarre (0.24%).

The same thing is repeated outside Spain. In Italy there is a clear difference between the north (where only three regions exceed 1%) and Germany, where electric vehicles are more widespread in the west than in the east. On the general map, as you move east, green tones give way to yellow (<0.1%).

Regions with the fewest electric vehicles in Spain. If we look at the regions where electric cars are gaining less popularity, Galicia and Andalusia rise by 0.16%, while La Rioja remains at 0.15%. However, these are data that are very far from Extremadura, where the penetration of electric vehicles is only 0.1%.

The data from Extremadura coincides with two problems with the electric vehicle. As of 2022, the region is an autonomous community with the lowest average salaries in all of Spain. In addition, Cáceres is the sixth province with the lowest population density in the entire country and, together with Badajoz, represents two black holes in terms of shippers.

Image | Eurostat

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