The 2020 Progress Report on Making the Transition to Zero-Emission Mobility in the European Union highlights the increasing market uptake of electrically-chargeable and hybrid electric cars and vans. In 2019, 3.0% of all cars sold were electrically-chargeable, up 2.4 percentage points since 2014, while 5.9% of new cars were hybrid electric, up 4.5 percentage points over six years. However, the market share of natural gas-powered cars has decreased slightly to 0.5%. Fuel cell vehicles currently account for a small share of total EU car sales. In terms of CO2 emissions, new-car emissions increased in 2019 for the third consecutive year, reaching an EU-wide average of 123g CO2/km. CO2 emissions from vans also increased for the second consecutive year in 2019, going up by 0.4% to reach an EU-wide average of 158.5g CO2/km. The report also notes that affordability is a major barrier to consumers, with the market uptake of ECVs directly correlated to a country's GDP per capita. Over 80% of all electric cars are sold in just six EU countries, with some of the lowest GDP per capita countries having an ECV market share of less than 1%.
