Electric vehicles market monitor for light-duty vehicles: China, Europe, United States, and India, 2023

Global electric vehicle (EV) sales reached over 13 million units in 2023, accounting for more than 15% of new light-duty vehicles (LDVs) sold worldwide. China, Europe, the United States, and India collectively represent around 88% of EVs sold globally.

China remained the largest EV market with over 7 million units sold, representing 33% of its new LDV sales share. Europe remained stagnant at 21% of sales share and the United States zoomed past 1 million units sold for the first time, reaching 1.4 million at year’s end. India doubled its sales to 100 thousands EVs, reaching 2% of its new LDV sales in 2023.

Figure 1. Light-duty EV sales share, number of EV models for sale, and mix of BEVs and PHEVs in the four markets, 2022 and 2023.¹

¹We set a minimum threshold of 10 unit sales when counting EV models to exclude models unavailable on the mass market. Particularly for China data, this effectively minimizes data-entry errors in the raw vehicle registration database.

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) dominated sales across all markets in 2023, though market share varied. China saw a decrease in the BEVs share from 78% to 69% accompanied by more plug-in hybrid offerings. In contrast, Europe saw an increase from 60% to 68%. BEVs remained dominant with no change in the BEV sales share in the United States (80%) and India (99%).

In 2023, electric SUV/MPV vehicle models represented the top-selling segment in China (36%), Europe (56%), and the United States (68%) The electric mini/subcompact segment is the top-selling segment in India, and the second most popular segment in China (25% and Europe (14%). The midsize segment came second in the United States with a decreasing share from 28% to 23%.

Figure 4. Market share by vehicle segment in each market, 2022-2023.