Fleet of electric passenger cars on the road in the Netherlands 2013-2019, by type

In 2019, the total fleet of electric passenger cars in the Netherlands amounted to approximately 203,400. The number of battery electric vehicles (BEV) had a significant growth, from 44,984 BEVs in 2018 to over 107,500 in 2019. The volume of plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV), however, decreased from 2016 onwards, with just under 95,900 PHEV vehicles in 2019. Looking at electric passenger cars’ performance on the total market, it can be seen that after struggling between 2015 and 2017, their market share increased again in 2018. In fact, the market share of newly registered electric cars amounted to 6.5 percent in 2018, an increase of roughly four percentage points compared to the previous year.

growth in electric vehicle charging stations

For electric car owners to charge their vehicle along the way, dedicated charging stations are needed along the road network. Most of these stations are public and semi-public, providing nearly 50,000 charging points combined across the Netherlands. As of January 2020, there were just over 52,600 charging stations to be found in total (public, semi-public, and fast charging). Moreover, it is estimated that there were an additional 150,000 private charging points in the Netherlands in 2019.

Tesla Model 3: most popular electric car

Looking at the leading fully electric passenger cars registered in the Netherlands, the Tesla Model 3 was the most sold electric car with over 30,000 registered vehicles as of January 2020. Tesla Model S recorded 12,907 registrations, whereas the Nissan Leaf reached 9,170. Tesla Model X was ranked as the eighth most popular electric car in terms of number of registrations. When combining the volumes of all three models, Tesla sold nearly 48,100 of these cars in the Netherlands.