European electric car registration figures for July show the EV category (comprising hybrid, plug-in hybrid and full-battery EVs reaching a new high of 7.4% of all new vehicle registrations.

The total EV segment nearly broke the 100,000 mark with 96,600 units in an overall July market of 1,325,600 units. (For comparison, the Australian market is around 1,100,000 units a year).

Whilst the overall vehicle market saw a small rise over July 2018 (+1.2%), the year-to-date figure is still down (-2.5%) as compared to last year.

Interestingly, PHEVs have continued their decline (-22% over July 2018) whilst full battery EV numbers nearly doubled their July 2018 total to reach almost 1.8% of the total market.

Much of the BEV registrations increase was due to Tesla’s Model 3 – but it was not the top selling BEV in July. That honour went to the Renault Zoe: up 103% and lifting the Zoe to top selling BEV model.

Other manufacturers doing well in the BEV segment were Volkswagen: up 64%; Hyundai: up by 334% and Audi, which sold 1,735 units of their E-Tron.