Croatia at the bottom of the EU in terms of electric car registrations

(Patria) - Croatia is at the very bottom of the EU list in terms of electric car registrations, with only a few percent compared to the total number of car registrations.

This data is from the latest Eurostat statistics, which also show that gasoline cars are still the most purchased in the EU. The reasons are sought in the still insufficient incentives at the EU level.

Croatia also has its own problem with a first-come, first-served incentive tender model, and sometimes tenders simply don't happen, reports Jutarnji.hr.

Thus, car dealerships and companies are currently wondering when the tender for incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles for legal entities will be announced, which the Fund for Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency announced would be by the end of this year. As only two weeks remain, their optimism has waned.

According to the Eurostat report, 10.7 million new cars were registered in the EU in 2023. Among them, pure gasoline cars had the largest share (34.5%), followed by hybrid gasoline-electric cars without a plug (21.1%), battery-electric cars (14.5%), and pure diesel cars (14.3%).

In nine EU countries, the share of hybrid and electric cars in new registrations last year exceeded 50 percent. The largest shares were recorded in Finland (78%), with 44 percent of registered hybrids and 34 percent of electric cars, Sweden (69%), with 30 percent of hybrids and 39 percent of electric vehicles, and the Netherlands, with a total share of 68 percent.

On the other side of the list are Bulgaria with the smallest share, a total of 7 percent, the Czech Republic, with a share of 20 percent, and Croatia, with a total share of 28 percent, of which only a few percent are plug-in electric vehicles, and in this regard, it is weaker than both Bulgarians and Czechs.

Denmark and Iceland have a significant share of plug-in electric cars, where it is higher than the share of hybrids, as in Norway.

An important factor in the market for electric and hybrid vehicles in the entire EU is incentives, which directly stimulate sales growth. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently complained about the insufficient incentives during a visit to a Ford factory in Cologne, and publicly called on the EU to stimulate the sale of electric vehicles through incentives and thus support manufacturers.