⚡️ Big picture: EV Universe Sales Report 2023

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This is the maxim that I’ve built the whole EV Universe on.

My goal today is simple: give you the best-detailed overview of 2023 EV sales globally that you can get anywhere, without you having to spend thousands of dollars to get it. Any dollars, for that matter.

See, that’s my big issue nowadays. The information we need sits out there ready for taking and making sense of it. But it is all so fragmented, or stuck behind hefty paywalls.

It’s nearly impossible to see the big picture if you don’t spend 24/7 monitoring all EV news. And all this makes it easier for the clickbait FUD headlines to spread.

There are a few good teams out there putting together this kind of data. And I appreciate them. But they are, naturally, selling these insights only business-to-business. That comes with a price tag only the bigger companies can pay. Whereas I…

I am but a common EV geek.

I can’t budget a $4.5k/year to $10k/year subscription for this research and all its benefits. Neither can most enthusiasts and businesses in the EV space. So where does that leave us?

Left with no other choice, I took this matter into my own hands.

I’ve managed to track down 10,311,976 battery-electric vehicle sales across 57 countries in 2023 right here.
I estimate that it is over 99% of all EV sales.

We’ve got nearly all of Europe. We’ve got US and China, Australia and New Zealand. We’ve even got countries like Thailand, Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, India, Japan.

This took me days upon days to put together.
If you want to support my work, you can:

1. Share this report with your friends and colleagues: evuniverse.io/p/evsales2023;

2. Become an EV Universe Pro Member;

3. Drop a few kWh in this high-voltage Tip Jar ⚡️ that I just made.

Thank you. Now, come and dig in with me.

Words: 4,087 | Graphs: 9 | Time to read: 10-15 min | Feeling: we’re so back

RESOURCES:

Insights all below, and in the same article online.
Visuals below, but I also uploaded them on Google Drive here.
Numbers: all in this Google spreadsheet. All the sources are linked to in the Column U.

Ready to zoom into the EV Universe?

10,311,976 battery-electric vehicles were sold in the world in 2023.
I’d estimate about 100k more were sold in reality, but I haven’t been able to track those down yet.

34.7% is how much EV sales grew globally in 2023, compared to 2022.

Per the best estimate for all car sales I’ve found so far, these 10.3M EVs would make up 11.45% of all 90.1M light-duty vehicles sold in the world. So globally, we also reached a major milestone:

Every 9th car to hit the roads of the Earth in 2023 was fully electric!

Let that settle in for a moment. Isn’t it crazy how far we’ve come?

The top three best-selling EVs globally in 2023 were:

1. Tesla Model Y: 1,212,601

2. Tesla Model 3: 529,287

3. BYD Yuan Plus: 418,994

Now, for a moment let’s look at the past decade or so to witness how fast it all happened. The period I like to call the “Modern Era of EVs”.

EV sales growth 2010-2023 globally

7,657,277 EVs were sold in 2022, and then EVs took up 9.45% of the overall 81M car sales. And before that… well I’ll let this graph I made do the talking:

Here are a few things I found mapping this out:

• The EV sales have increased 53 times within just 10 years.

• Just 13 years ago, there were 7,200 EVs sold globally the whole year, now the same amount of EVs are sold every six hours!

• Does all this look like EVs are doomed to you?

EV sales in 2023 per region

Ok, so let’s start breaking the data down.
This is how the 10.3M EV sales of 2023 was distributed:

60.7% in China: every 4^th car sold was an EV.
19.6% in Europe: every 6-7th car sold was an EV.
11.5% in the US: every 13th car sold was an EV.
8.2% elsewhere: every 42nd car sold was an EV.

The EV future is already here. It is just unevenly distributed.

This year I decided to break all the EV sales down for you looking at the different milestones reached. Starting with:

Countries that sold over 100,000 EVs

12 countries or regions sold over 100k EVs last year.

🇨🇳 China saw 6,258,000 EVs sold in 2023, growing 24.3% from 2022 and reaching a 24% EV market share, up from 21% in 2022.

Considering the sheer volume, the growth is significant — the 1.225M additional EV sales count for as many EVs as the US sold for the whole year. Or, through another lens, with 6.26 million EVs, China sold 1.66x as many EVs in 2023 as the rest of the world combined.

The best-selling EVs in China show us the Wuling Mini EV era is over. Will perhaps be replaced with Dolphin this year?

1. Tesla Model Y: 456,394

2. BYD Yuan Plus: 338,490

3. BYD Dolphin: 334,800

Note that as promised, I report only about all-electric models here (everybody loves pointing out PHEVs whenever I compare BYD with Tesla. I never count PHEVs.)

Europe had 2,019,401 EV sales in 2023, growing 28.2% from 2022 and reaching a 15.72% EV market share. Note that I cover all of Europe geographically, not just the 🇪🇺 European Union here.

Europe’s best-selling EVs came in as:

1. Tesla Model Y: 255,062

2. Tesla Model 3: 101,313

3. VW ID.4: 83,033

🇺🇸 United States had 1,189,051 EVs sold in 2023, growing 62.1% and reaching a 7.67% market share in 2023. So for the first time, the US sold more than 1 million and Europe more than 2 million EVs in a single year. Let’s see if the US can keep this magnificent rate of growth up.

The best-selling EVs in the US in 2023 have a similar layout: Tesla, Tesla, locals.

1. Tesla Model Y: 394,497

2. Tesla Model 3: 220,910

3. Chevy Bolt EV/EUV: 62,045

The US market is a lot less saturated with different EV models, so Tesla still made up 55% of all EVs sold in the country. In Europe, Teslas made up ~18% of all sales. Tesla’s dominance has been quite clear in 2023:

Small update: one of the guys that can be held responsible for the five top spots in these three podiums, called Elon Musk, “liked” the post I made with this graph on the very social platform the guy owns:

Interestingly, California, which makes up 31% of all EVs sold in the US, “only” grew 29.8%. In 2023, it made up 39.8%. Looks like the EV future is starting to become more evenly distributed in the US. A very good sight indeed.

From the other 100k+ EV markets,

🇳🇴 Norway recorded 104,587 EV sales, and with its market that is almost all-EV now at 82.38%, saw a decline of 24.4% in sales over the previous year. But since the EV mix is so high, here it means the overall car sales market was down roughly the same (-27.20%).

🇫🇷 France had a quick catch-up sprint this year to 🇩🇪 Germany and 🇬🇧 UK, which are steadily growing as significant EV markets now, all three with a similar EV mix of all sales (at the 16-18% range). We’ll cover these more below.

🇨🇦 Canada recorded 139,501 EV sales for 2023, growing 41.5% over 2022, and EVs reached an 8.1% market share in the country. The EV uptake is led by Quebec (13.7% EV mix) and British Columbia (16.6% EV mix) provinces.

🇰🇷 South Korea had 156,767 EV sales in 2023, staying steady and barely growing, and EVs made up 9% of all car sales in the country. Now, on to:

Countries that more than doubled their BEV sales in 2023

This list is one of my favorites. This is where undeniable progress is happening, the true rEVolution in progress.

EV sales more than doubled in 2023 in SIXTEEN countries. Let’s take a look at a few of those stories:

🇹🇷 Turkey comes out as a winner here, growing from just 7,733 EV sales in 2022 → 64,515 EV sales and 6.68% market share in 2023. Why such a jump? Mainly because there’s now a proper EV choice:

• The local EV maker Togg started sales of its EVs in March, and already managed 19,583 deliveries of the Togg T10X in the first year.

• Tesla launched in Turkey, starting deliveries in May, and sold ~12,150 Model Ys in the year.

🇹🇭 Thailand had a similar jump from 9,729 EV sales in 2022 → 78,314 EV sales, growing 705% year over year. EVs now make up 12.33% of all car sales in Thailand.

We’ve been reporting on Thailand becoming one of the new EV production hubs for a while, which will surely further boost the uptake. BYD entered the market in late 2022 and made up 39.1% of all EV sales in 2023. Neta and MG were the next to follow with ~16% market share each.

BYD is also kicking off local production of its Atto 3 (Yuan Plus) in Thailand in Q3 this year.

Notice that this year we’ve got some countries we haven’t covered before, like
🇨🇷 Costa Rica with 6,312 EV sales in 2023, jumping 204% from 2022 and recording a 11.6% market share for EVs.

🇵🇦 Panama is still at <1% EV share with 434 EVs sold in 2023, but growing strong, same with the larger 🇧🇷 Brazil and 🇲🇽 Mexican market. I assume both of the latter are to accelerate when the Chinese EV makers (and Tesla for Mexico) put their factories on the ground.

🇦🇺 Australia deserves a separate mention, as its playing-by-slightly-different-rules car market is significantly growing towards a full-EV future. Australia saw 87,217 EV sales in 2023, jumping 161% from just 33,410 EV sales in 2022. The EV market share is now at 7.17%, up from 3.09% the year before.

To note, the Australian EV market also grew 169% from 2021 → 2022. It can’t possibly keep going at this rate for long, but you can safely disregard the incoming headlines of “EV adoption slowing down in Australia” (which the oil lobby will sure happily produce) when the growth rate goes to say 100% instead of 160% in 2024.

The rEVolution was still led by Tesla in Australia (53% of all EV sales), with the top three EVs sold being the Model Y (28.8k), Model 3 (17.3k), and BYD Atto 3 (11k).

I expect BYD to gain a stronger foothold there, but one thing is certain. Australia is moving absolutely in the right direction 👏 🇦🇺!

🇮🇳 India saw 82,025 passenger EV sales in 2023, growing 114.3% from 2022. Note that these are just 4-wheelers counted here. Shoutout to Tesla Club India (link) for the data.

Although it’s a 2-and 3-wheeler dominated market, there’s still a significant ~4.7M total 4-wheeler market ripe for the EV taking. The 3-wheeler sales are, by the way, already 54% electric!

Top EV companies in India: currently, Tata Motors dominates with 72.8% of all EV sales followed by MG Motor (11.5%) and Mahindra & Mahindra (6.35%). Can you imagine what happens if foreign automakers get easier access to the market?

🇧🇪 Belgium is the growth leader among European countries with a special feat: 148% growth year over year, but what makes it even more significant is the volume they did it at, going from 37.6k → 93,285 EV sales in one year. This also caused the EV market share to jump from 9.82% in 2022 to 19.57% in 2023. About every fifth car now sold in Belgium is all-electric!

🇵🇹 Portugal doubled its EV sakes to 36,390 in 2023, reaching 18.2% EV market share. What a feat!

Other top growers include some smaller car markets in Europe, with 🇬🇷 Greece (+125.6%), 🇧🇬 Bulgaria (119.3%), 🇨🇾 Cyprus (+115.9%) and my dear 🇪🇪 Estonia (+110.3%) all of which managed to more than double their EV sales, and currently hover at around 4-6% EV market share.

Countries with over 20% sales fully electric in 2023

🇳🇴 Norway has done it. Just last month, EVs hovered at around a 90% market share. The old (ICE) king is dead, long live the (EV) king. However, here’s some massive news that we don’t see mentioned nearly anywhere:

Ten countries had over 20% sales fully electric in 2023! With six countries above 30%! So it’s worth looking past Norway here and witness countries like

🇮🇸 Iceland saw 8,781 EVs registered in 2023, growing an impressive 57.8% over the previous year and has reached the point where 50% of its sales are all-electric. Jumping from 33% EV mix to 50% EV mix is wild. Have you seen that in the news? Yeah, me neither. That’s every other car, fully electric. 👏 

Now, 🇸🇪 Sweden had 112,208 EV sales in 2023 — and although it grew “just” 18.1% this year, the country has been able to grow its already significant 33% EV market share in 2022 to a 38.72% EV mix in 2023, securing the 3^rd spot in EV adoption in the world.

I believe if everything goes right, then perhaps Sweden will be able to complete a 50%+ jump next year, reaching ~50% BEV mix. This is, if it goes the same route Iceland takes. Then again, Sweden grew just 18% this year, while Iceland showed 56% growth also the year before the jump this year.

🇩🇰 Denmark with its 62,759 EV sales in 2023 seems even more set up for the leap, having doubled its sales this year and going from 20% to 36.3% EV market share. Either way, I love to see this adoption curve!

🇫🇮 Finland saw 29,535 EV sales, also growing 103.3% compared to 2022, and jumped about the same length in EV market share, from 17.8% → 33.75% in BEV mix. Note, that the Finnish auto market is two times smaller than Denmark’s, but their growth rate was nearly identical, along with a similar BEV mix.

Here’s a great graph from Norway that I found a bit back, showing exactly how the transition took place there. I hope to replicate this graph for the next markets soon.

🇳🇱 Netherlands had 113,981 EV sales in 2023, with an impressive 55.6% year-over-year growth from 2022 and jumping from 23.5% to 30.8% in EV market share. If the policies remain the same (and if their road tax for EVs promised for 2025 would be scrapped), the growth would likely continue.

Interestingly, the top EVs here are different from most of Europe: Škoda Enyaq beat the Model Y there with 5,467 sales over 3,892 respectively, and the Peugeot e-208 came in 3^rd with 3,618 sales.

🇱🇺 Luxembourg had 11,052 new EVs hit the streets in 2023, growing 72.9% and sees EV market share jump from 15.2%→22.5%.

🇨🇭 Switzerland’s 52,728 EV sales marked a 31.3% growth in 2023, and its 20.91% EV market share completes our top-10 list of countries where the EV route seems undeniable. Oh, and by the way…

They told us EVs don’t work in cold. But did you notice the top five in EV adoption?

No further comments, your honor.

Countries with 10-20% sales fully electric in 2023

Adding the countries with between 10% and 20% EV market share range, we had a total of 24 (!) countries that had over 10% of their sales fully electric in 2024. All these are countries where at least every 10th car is fully electric. Very close to graduating to the 20% EV market share now are

🇦🇹 Austria with its 47,621 EV sales, 39.4% growth and 19.91% EV market share, and Belgium which we covered earlier. Along with

🇳🇿 New Zealand, where the 21,054 EV sales steadily grew nearly 30% in 2023 to reach a 19% EV market share. Tesla MY with 3,939 sales, BYD Atto 3 with 3,182 sales, and MG 4 with 1,796 took home the best-selling EV titles in NZ.

🇮🇪 Ireland’s 21,054 EVs sold in 2023 show a steady growth of 45.4% per year (it grew 81.30% the year prior), and the country has now reached a 18.6% market share. It’s one of the few European countries where I found Model Y was not at the 1st position, but second after VW ID.4 sales. Škoda Enyaq, which also pops up here and there in the top three, came in 3^rd here too.

🇩🇪 Germany recorded 524,219 EV sales in 2023, and despite its December slump due to the sudden EV incentive cut, also reached 18.23% EV market share in 2023. The German EV sales grew 11.4% in 2023, and the market share is up just slightly compared to the 17.75% share in 2022.

With 524,219 EVs, Germany still makes up a bit over a quarter of the European EV sales (26%). Still, it’s dropping from the 30% the year prior, since the countries around it are significantly outpacing this largest car market in Europe. Perhaps also notable, is that as in 2022, Tesla again took home the best-selling EV model in the home of the legacy auto.
Top three in EV sales in Germany in 2023:

1. Tesla Model Y: 45,818

2. VW ID.4: 28,070

3. Fiat 500e: 22,610

🇮🇱 Israel, with ~50,000 EVs sold, showed both significant growth (+72.4%) and market share (18%) this year. Here, it’s the China+Tesla combination in action again with BYD Atto 3 taking 28.5% of the market with its 14.2k sales, Geely Geometry EV with 7.1k, and Tesla Model Y with 4,151 sales.

🇫🇷 France with its 298,219 EV sales in 2023 is a large market which also seems to be clearly moving in the EV direction, growing EV sales by 47% in 2023, reaching 16.8% EV share out of all cars sold. With the French, two of the three top spots again belonged, instead of locals, to Tesla dethroning the Peugeot e-208 and Dacia Spring (which won over the M3 in 2022). Top three in EV sales in France in 2023:

1. Tesla Model Y: 37,071

2. Dacia Spring: 29,725

3. Tesla Model 3: 24,514

Let’s see if the new quickly sold-out incentive schemes of France move the needle and graduate France into 20%+ club this year.

🇬🇧 United Kingdom, with its 314,684 EVs sold in 2023, seems to be on a rather similar spot with France. These are, after all, the 4^th and 5^th largest EV markets by sales in the world right now, and deserve credit as such. UK did see lower EV sales growth (17.8%) and didn’t move in EV market share (16.55% in 2022 to 16.54% now).

It’s the UK where MG Motors has made the largest splash — placing between the Model Y (35,899) and Model 3 (13,536) with 21,715 MG 4’s sold.

Other countries with a significant 10-20% market share we haven’t mentioned above yet include 🇸🇬 Singapore (18.10% EV market share with 5,467 sold, best-seller BYD), 🇲🇹 Malta (17.3% EV market share with 1,248 sold), and a proper result from 🇷🇴 Romania, whose 15,368 EV sales grew 32.1% and achieved a 10.6% EV market share.

Some interesting finds

🇯🇵 Japan saw 88,535 EV sales in 2023, rising to just 2.20% EV market share, but it did see 50.5% growth from the previous year. It’s an interesting market, considering 43,991 of these sales were standard-sized EVs and 44,544 were Kei cars (minicars). Nissan Sakura took home the title here with 37,264 sales.

🇮🇹 Italy’s 66,265 EV sales in 2023 turned its -26.70% decrease in 2022 into +34.80% growth in 2023, with the country reaching 4.23% EV share. As you might’ve guessed from the %s above, Italy’s EV sales in 2023 almost caught what they were in… 2021. Now let’s see if they can zoom past it all for this year. Given the size of the market, there’s a lot of potential.

🇪🇸 Spain 51,612 EVs recorded a solid 69.1% jump from the 30.5k EV sales in 2022, reaching a 5.44% market share in 2023. Here, Tesla MY and M3 also dominate, with MG 4 getting 3^rd place. If the country can keep the growth rate up, it does have several more years of room to grow with that market share.

🇮🇩 Indonesia had 17,062 EV sales, growing 65.2% in 2023, and reaching 2.19% market share.

🇿🇦 South Africa saw 931 EVs sold, growing 85.50% from 2022, while EVs still make up just 0.27% of all cars. Volvo XC40, BMW iX and iX3 make up the top three there.

🇺🇦 Ukraine, due to its ongoing war with Russia that invaded the country, is in a whole separate situation when it comes to EVs. One might expect a slump in the EV sales, but the situation is quite different — 7,520 new EVs were sold in 2023, and even more noteworthy, together with used EVs brought into the country in 2023, the total comes to 37,600. This, in turn, is about 2.8 times more than in 2022.

Here are some other European countries we haven’t yet covered above but you’ll find in the spreadsheet:

EV sales in the rest of the Americas

I was especially happy to have found 2023 EV sales data for more Central and South American nations this year:

To sum it up

Consider this — from the 60 countries and regions I collected the data on, only one country recorded a decrease in EV sales in 2023 compared to 2022.

And that one country was Norway, which already sits at 82.4% EV adoption.

I enjoyed this Bloomberg chart showing 31 countries have reached the crucial 5% tipping point through Q4 2023. In our spreadsheet, you’ll find that there are at least 35 countries that have actually passed this tipping point — but the idea remains the same:

We’ll go over the sales, including the markets seeing some hiccups, in the next newsletters. If you read all of the above, do let me know what (and if) surprised you most.

This report went out to 6,762 (very patient) subscribers. I hope you enjoyed it.

I also want to give a special thanks to some help I had unearthing these EV sales: José at EV-Volumes, our Pro member Antonio, Kārlis from Uzladets(.lv), Tesla Club India, Juan Mojica and Ale Montero for LatAm sales.

See you soon ✌️ 

— Jaan