Many MindedEurope sets electric car record as BEVs reach 31% of September sales
Europe registered about 422,000 fully electric passenger cars in September 2026, a record that equals a 31% market share. Battery-electric registrations rose 63% year over year, the fastest growth in over three years. Counting plugin hybrids too, plugins grew 49% to a record 590,000 units and a 43% share. PHEVs alone rose 23% to 167,000, also a record.
The combustion side moved the other way. Petrol held 18% of sales, down 21% year over year, and diesel held 4%, down 28%. Conventional hybrids grew only 5% in a market that grew 10% to 1.4 million units, so their share slipped from 36% to 34%. Year to date, BEVs have 25% of the market (36% with PHEVs), up from 20% and 29% for full-year 2025.
Tesla's Model Y was the best-selling EV with 41,987 registrations, up 52%, and the Model 3 followed with 26,770. The two also took first and second in the overall market, the second time ever after December 2022. BYD placed two models in the EV top 5. The Model Y starts at €40,000.
Why it matters: transport is a basic need, and fuel is a recurring cost that EVs largely remove. Volume of this kind is what pushes battery costs down and widens the used-car supply that later makes electric driving cheaper for more households. It also cuts oil dependence, and a bigger EV fleet adds demand for clean electricity.
Caveats: the source text is truncated, so its fuller top-5 analysis is missing. The author's forecasts on hybrid peaks and future models are opinion. The excerpt doesn't define which countries count as Europe. Watch whether the full-year share keeps climbing, and whether the larger-car segments, which the author shows still lean on PHEVs and combustion, follow.
Source: CleanTechnica