Number of fully electric cars in NL doubled last year

On January 1st the Netherlands counted nearly 45 thousand fully electric cars, double the number on January 1st last year. The number of plug-in hybrids decreased by 3 percent over the past year to nearly 94 thousand, Statistics Netherlands reported based on license plate registrations at RDW.

At the start of this year, there were 139 thousand plug-in cars - both fully electric and hybrids - in the Netherlands, a 16 percent increase compared to the start of last year. Almost 77 percent of these cars are driven for business purposes. That is much higher than the 12 percent of all cars in the Netherlands that are used for business.

The number of fully electric cars increased almost tenfold over the past five years. On January 1st, 2014, there were 4,600 fully electric cars in the country. The biggest increase happened last year. On January 1st, 2018, the Netherlands counted some 21 thousand fully electric cars. At the start of this year, there were 44,700.

The number of hybrids driving around in the Netherlands increased dramatically since 2014, but that growth stagnated in 2017. Last year there were 3 percent fewer than a year earlier. According to the stats office, this is because the levy for plug-in hybrids was increased to 22 percent in 2017, which means that the hybrids are tax-wise no longer cheaper than a petrol or diesel car.

Nearly 90 percent of plug-in cars registered in the Netherlands last year, were fully electric.