It has finally happened. For the first time ever, EVs outsold petrol cars in Europe in December 2025, a milestone that felt like it was edging closer for a couple of years but has now officially landed. The data comes from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, and while it took a single month to tip the balance rather than the full year, the numbers behind it tell a story that has been building for a while.
Pull back to the full year view for 2025, and petrol cars still held the overall lead with a 26.6% market share compared to battery electric vehicles at 17.4%. But that headline number somewhat obscures how dramatic the direction of travel actually is. The December milestone matters because it shows where the trajectory is going, not where things currently sit on average.
Petrol is falling fast and diesel is falling even faster
The most striking number from the ACEA data is not actually about EVs at all. It is about what is happening to petrol. Petrol car registrations dropped by 18.7% across major European markets by the end of 2025. That is not a marginal dip or a slight cooling of demand. That is a steep, sustained decline that has touched every significant market on the continent.
Diesel has it even worse. Registrations dropped by 24.2%, leaving diesel with a meagre 8.9% market share for the full year. For context, diesel once dominated European roads, particularly in countries like France, Germany, and the UK, where it was actively encouraged through favorable tax treatment for decades. Watching it fall to under 9% of new car sales is a genuinely remarkable shift in just a few years, and the reports that some European and UK fuel retailers could stop selling diesel entirely by 2030 start to look a lot more plausible in that light.
The combination of falling petrol and diesel registrations is not just a story about EVs winning. It is also a story about consumer confidence in combustion engines declining, and manufacturers quietly reducing the number of pure petrol and diesel variants they even offer any more.
Reason one: Europeans now have a genuinely wide choice of EVs
One of the biggest practical barriers to EV adoption in the past was simple availability. If the only pure electric options in your price range were one or two models with limited appeal, a lot of people just stuck with what they knew. That situation has changed substantially.
Legacy automakers across Europe have now built out their electric ranges to the point where customers can choose from compact city cars all the way up to large seven-seat SUVs without leaving a single brand’s lineup. Peugeot is a good example of how far this has gone. The brand now sells a pure electric version of every car and light commercial vehicle in its entire range, meaning the choice for buyers is essentially electric or hybrid, with pure petrol increasingly sidelined.
This kind of breadth matters. When EVs outsold petrol cars in December 2025, it was not because a handful of prestige models skewed the data. It was because enough variety exists at enough price points to bring in buyers who would previously have had no obvious electric option that fit their needs.
Reason two: EVs have gotten considerably cheaper
Price has always been the loudest objection when people explain why they have not switched to electric. For years, that objection was entirely valid. EVs were expensive, particularly at the smaller end of the market where the bulk of European car sales happen. That is changing in a meaningful way.
The Renault 5 E-Tech is probably the clearest illustration of the shift. Starting at just under £23,000 in the UK, which is roughly $32,000 or AU$45,500, it sits at a price point that genuinely competes with mid-range petrol hatchbacks rather than existing as a premium alternative to them. For a car that is fun to drive, well-designed, and distinctly not trying to look like a spaceship, it has opened up a new category of EV buyer.
At the same time, the arrival of Chinese brands on European shores has added a new layer of price pressure. BYD, Omoda, Jaecoo, and Leapmotor have all entered the market offering competitive specifications at prices that have forced European manufacturers to sharpen their own numbers. The effect of that competition on affordability is real and it is working in consumers’ favour.
Reason three: BYD had an absolutely extraordinary year
Speaking of BYD specifically, the numbers are hard to overstate. The Chinese manufacturer saw its European sales increase by 228% in 2025, jumping from around 39,000 vehicles sold to 129,000 over the course of the year. That is not incremental growth. That is a company that has genuinely arrived and forced the entire European market to take notice.
BYD’s success in Europe is significant for a few reasons beyond just the volume. It demonstrates that European buyers, who tend to have strong preferences for established domestic or Japanese brands, are willing to cross over to Chinese manufacturers when the product and price are right. It also validates the broader argument that EVs outsold petrol cars in Europe partly because the competition in the electric segment has intensified dramatically, pushing quality up and prices down across the board.
Where BYD goes from 129,000 units, the trajectory seems clear. The brand is investing in European production, expanding its model range, and showing no signs of treating Europe as a secondary market.
It would be incomplete to talk about this milestone without acknowledging what is actually sitting at the top of the 2025 sales charts. Hybrid vehicles, the ones combining a petrol engine with an electric motor and battery, were the overall bestsellers in Europe for the full year with 34.5% of all sales. That is more than petrol, more than EVs, and significantly more than diesel.
This tells you something important about where most European buyers currently sit in their thinking. They want some electrification. They want lower fuel bills and reduced emissions. But they are not quite ready to go fully electric, whether due to charging infrastructure concerns, range anxiety for longer trips, or simply not being ready to commit fully. The hybrid is the logical middle ground for those people right now.
