EV sales growing globally: in Q1, Europe grew 28%; USA grew 18%; China grew 55% compared to Q1 2024

EVWire brief: 2025 has started with quite a lot of promise in terms of EV sales despite the turbulent time in (geo)politics. We’ll launch the country-by-country data over time in our feed and EV Sales tracker, but here I’ve compiled the first quarter 2025 data for you on the three largest regions:

PS, unless otherwise noted, EV in our context means only battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), and does not include plug-in hybrids. The sales numbers are rounded up.

573,500 battery-electric vehicles were sold in Europe (EU+EFTA+UK) in the first quarter of 2025, growing 28% compared to the first quarter of 2024. That said, Q1 of 2024 was a bit of an outlier, mostly due to the sudden subsidy cut mid-December 2023 in Germany.

EV Market share in Q1 2025 rose to 16.95% from 13.2% a year ago. In other words, every 6th car sold in Europe in Q1 was fully electric.

Largest EV markets: UK already overtook Germany in total EV sales last year, and kept the lead in Q1. UK grew 43%, Germany 39%.

Here’s the fuel mix of European car sales in Q1:

1,640,000 battery-electric vehicles were sold in China in the first quarter of 2025, growing 55% compared to the first quarter of 2024.

EV Market share reached 27%, which is their best Q1 result ever.
Every 4th car sold in China in Q1 was fully electric.

PHEV sales also grew in the country, but less: 37%

China continues its pace in both domestic EV sales (which we’re covering here) and exports, the latter of which is significantly shown in many ‘Rest of World’ countries. Now that the BEV import targeted tariffs from the EU have been implemented, Chinese non-pure EV makers, such as BYD, are increasingly importing PHEVs and HEVs to the European Union.

Here’s the fuel mix of car sales in China in Q1:

301,000 battery-electric vehicles were sold in United States in the first quarter of 2025, growing 18% compared to the first quarter of 2024.

EV Market share reached 8%, which is the best Q1 result for US ever.
Every 12.5th car sold in the US was fully electric in Q1.

Sales of PHEVs declined -11% and sales of hybrids grew 47%.

Likely factors: anticipation of federal tax credits ending; for the drop of PHEVs, the removal of the two popular PHEV models from credit eligibility due to the foreign component rules. Now, the House passed the removal of federal credits and if it also passes the Senate, EV buyers have until end of year 2025 to get the deal done.

Here’s the fuel mix of car sales in USA in Q1:

In 2024, every 7th car sold in the world was fully electric. See our full 2024 sales report here. The growth continued last year, and we seem to be clearly heading in the same direction this year. Here’s the history:

And the year 2024 ended up regionally like this:

DIG DEEPER: Find all our latest EV sales news and the overview resource in our ⚡ EV SALES TRACKER page, or our full report on 2024 EV sales. The near future will see the sales tracker page go live with a minimum of quarterly updated sales sheets per country and per automaker, visible to everyone.