Yet another Hacker News

Europe's electric car sales jump 49% as global EV sales grow

63 points cisc 1 hour ago 55 comments

pavlov 58 minutes ago | parent

The USA is becoming a weird protectionist island of expensive and inefficient cars while the rest of the world is moving forward.

It’s not the first time of course. Something similar happened with banking, where the US got stuck in the mid-20th century with people still using paper checks, no access to instant digital transfers, etc.

GardenLetter27 54 minutes ago | parent

So is Europe though. We even copied the US with the fixed fee on imports now plus an extra percentage fee coming in 2 years.

Meanwhile Chinese EVs are banned, and even Tesla FSD is banned in most of Europe.

nkoren 50 minutes ago | parent

In my neighborhood in London, roughly half the cars I see are Chinese EVs.

martinald 30 minutes ago | parent

UK doesn't have the same tariffs the EU applies though...

CalRobert 29 minutes ago | parent

Is Britain more relaxed than the EU around imports?

marcyb5st 48 minutes ago | parent

What? I see BYD electric cars everywhere in Switzerland/Italy where I usually hang around

ch_sm 44 minutes ago | parent

Chinese EVs aren’t banned in the EU (to my knowledge), but have an import tax that brings their total price roughly to the level of western products. BYD is special amongst them, because they build cars in Hungary.

jttnr 42 minutes ago | parent

I'm glad FSD isn't allowed in Germany. A camera-only system is a long way from what I'd consider safe. Just as a reminder:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJL3htsDyQ

GardenLetter27 19 minutes ago | parent

This is a ridiculous edge case.

The real comparison is compared to most human drivers - distracted on their phones and smoking cigarettes, drunk driving or high on marijuana or laughing gas, etc.

tilsammans 41 minutes ago | parent

Completely untrue, Tesla FSD is approved for Finland, Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, Czechia, Croatia, Slovakia and Latvia. Chinese cars like BYD, Xpeng etc are everywhere too.

Gravityloss 29 minutes ago | parent

European cars manufacturers are sleeping on FSD. Why would I buy a non-FSD car if there's not much price difference?

AFAIU only Ford and Tesla have it currently?

origini 23 minutes ago | parent

There is no Tesla Full self driving in europe.

BMW can self drive on autobahns in europe.

throwa356262 23 minutes ago | parent

Mercedes has self driving that unlike Tesla has gone through proper safety testing and can be used at higher autonomy levels.

Camera-only systems like the Tesla cannot handle some weather conditions and should not allowed on European roads.

GardenLetter27 21 minutes ago | parent

But not in France, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Poland, Italy, Ireland, etc. - thus not in most of Europe.

throw-qqqqq 20 minutes ago | parent

> Meanwhile Chinese EVs are banned

Maybe I misunderstand you, but I don’t think this is true. On the contrary: AFAIK there isn’t a single European country that does this.

Which countries are you thinking of?

GardenLetter27 14 minutes ago | parent

The main issue is the tariffs and certification - like there is a literal hard cap on the total number of imports. It is getting better now though as BYD has the factory in Hungary at least.

It's crazy that the EU criticise Trump for the ridiculous tariffs, but then do near the same thing themselves.

And unlike Trump, we cannot vote them out.

rsynnott 10 minutes ago | parent

> Meanwhile Chinese EVs are banned

Are you actually in the EU? If so, are you blind? Chinese EVs self-evidently are not banned.

48585858 49 minutes ago | parent

Europe has effectively banned Chinese cars so we have to buy them rebadged as bmw for 3x the price

jurgenburgen 43 minutes ago | parent

That tariff barely covers the exchange rate manipulation. I do think it’s kind of stupid, for goods that are not strategic we should take advantage of the cheap EV prices so we can move more quickly on the green reforms.

The lower tariff on hybrid cars is even dumber, why do we want more polluting cars?

tecleandor 30 minutes ago | parent

I can see Jaeco, Omoda, BYD, Leapmotor, Lynk, MG... cars all day in Spain.

origini 22 minutes ago | parent

No it hasn't and BYD has a factory in hungary now which solves the tarifs issue for BYD

azernik 31 minutes ago | parent

It's not even the first time for cars!

jgalt212 27 minutes ago | parent

Whatever, dude. Enjoy your protests and riots.

neverminder 54 minutes ago | parent

Europe's push of EVs will simply end up denying personal vehicles to the poor. Right now anyone can go out and buy an old ICE clunker for 1000 euros that will still be drivable and have most of it's original range with zero range anxiety. I don't see this ever being reality with EVs.

puszczyk 51 minutes ago | parent

oh yes, europe is so famous for its extensive oil fields allowing for cheap oil for heating and transportation to the poor masses

throw1234567891 36 minutes ago | parent

You really gotta be careful with such statements. You obviously mean EU, there are rich oil fields in Europe. Just real far to the East.

Synaesthesia 46 minutes ago | parent

Without the Toyota pickup truck, how will Marty take Jennifer to the lake? Throw a couple of sleeping bags in the back ...

mmustapic 42 minutes ago | parent

Still lots of cheap ICE cars being sold in Europe.

kabes 42 minutes ago | parent

A lot of European car manufacturers are in trouble exactly because they didn't pus EVs hard enough and let the Chinese take the market

bushwart 27 minutes ago | parent

They were pushing it like nobody's business. The problem was a combination of the lack of charging infrastructure and the comparatively high EV prices. Cheaper EVs are perfectly viable in Europe even with the existing charging infrastructure as the Chinese have shown.

origini 18 minutes ago | parent

Plenty did not do anything for years and then the first ones to come out were super expensive in a "yeah we don't want to but here take this expensive thing".

20% margin is nicer than 5% margin

dietr1ch 42 minutes ago | parent

It seem to me that Europe has the public transit to be able to do that. The problem in North America is that having a car is pretty much necessary for most people, or at least deemed so, thus you can't quickly phase out heat engines (ICE's waste most energy as heat).

yulaow 31 minutes ago | parent

Public transit is good but only in big cities. In the other rural areas without a car you are pretty much fucked, and those are also the poorest areas... people there cannot buy a car unless it is a very old used one

neverminder 29 minutes ago | parent

Yes, I can already imagine some coastal liberal saying "just use public transport, bro" to a rural family with kids. Coming from someone who recently had a misfortune to use public transport outside of big city in Eastern Europe.

flakeoil 36 minutes ago | parent

You can buy a new EV for 20k EUR. Soon you can buy used EVs for much less. Of course it takes time before there will be used EVs for only 1000 EUR in the market. Maybe very long as an electric motor lasts longer than an ICE engine.

Also consider the cost for fuel vs electricity (with electricity you pay 1/5 vs gasoline if you charge at home).

skummetmaelk 33 minutes ago | parent

Love the bandwagon takes. It's so obvious that you are personally against this and will latch onto any argument against EVs. No way you gave a shit about "denying personal vehicles to the poor" until you heard that sound bite as an argument against EVs.

bushwart 29 minutes ago | parent

You must not be familiar with Euro roadworthiness requirements. A car bought for that price will likely run up expenses of at least 80-90% of the purchase price again to get it to pass TüV or the like if it doesn't have it already, with even more looming on the horizon. Instead of buying something with three wheels in the grave, why not just get a monthly train ticket for a fraction of the price?

throwaway384034 21 minutes ago | parent

What do you think will happen to the train ticket prices if you push everyone towards public transport? Depending on which zones you are travelling between in London it can already cost you £300 / month. That's £3600 a year. Not even factoring in safety which becomes a priority if you have a family.

FabCH 15 minutes ago | parent

That's a UK thing. You did that entirely to yourself.

Deutschlandticket is 55 GBP / month and valid across all German regional public transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandticket. ICE is excluded, but if you are commuting via ICE...

Zurich pass, valid on all public transport is 800 CHF per year.

rsynnott 5 minutes ago | parent

That's mostly just a UK thing; you can blame John Major, to a large extent.

(Unusually, not Thatcher; even Thatcher was against privatising the railways.)

SideburnsOfDoom 27 minutes ago | parent

Here's a data point about how out or touch with reality this opinion is:

the 10 cheapest new cars you can buy in the UK in 2026

https://petrolblog.com/articles/cheapest-new-cars-uk-2026

This includes 4 or 5 EVs and a couple of hybrids.

origini 19 minutes ago | parent

I agree that this is a problem for a small percentage of peoople and I find it ignorant to playt down this issue.

But EVs are critical to the environment and we have to do something.

Also the biggest issue is not EVs, its the super unclear and slow transition and borderline fighting against it which would allow for cheap EVs to exist due to scaling laws.

yabatopia 40 minutes ago | parent

4.5 million EVs sold in the EU in 2026, a 31% increase for the year so far.

In North America, that's including Canada? 1.3 million EVs so far this year. Minus 21% YTD-26 vs YTD-25.

Perhaps American drivers are putting off their purchase of an electric car until the launch of the flying roadster?

throw1234567891 35 minutes ago | parent

How are they going to tow their boats?

rimeice 25 minutes ago | parent

Where we’re going, we won’t need boats.

origini 18 minutes ago | parent

My EV can easily tow a boat

theappsecguy 10 minutes ago | parent

The issue in canada is that charging infrastructure is severely lagging, but also the travel distances are much longer on average and winter temperatures have a huge impact on range. So whether an EV can work for you is a lifestyle question.

spottedmarley 25 minutes ago | parent

I think North America is just a much bigger place so the required charging infrastructure build out is much larger than in European states. Personally, EVs are not practical yet in the US for my uses. When EV charging stations are as common as gas stations and charge times are reduced, I'll start looking at EVs.

kgermino 15 minutes ago | parent

Meh. Not saying they’re ready for your use, there’s a lot of reasons they wouldn’t be, but our charging infrastructure is in a really good place. There’s very few areas that you will struggle to charge on a long drive

mr_mitm 23 minutes ago | parent

Why do these articles never include a simple plot? Instead, they describe the time evolution of several curves in prose. Does anyone find that helpful?

ZeroGravitas 17 minutes ago | parent

Best to skip the news article and use the interactive graphs based on the same data:

https://ember-energy.org/data/ev-sales-tracker/