European Car Sales Climbed To 15.7 Million Units Last Year, Tesla Model 3 Is The EV Champion

New cars sales in Europe climbed to 15,757,412 units last year, marking the best result in over a decade.

According to JATO Dynamics, the result marks the sixth year of consecutive gains and an additional 171,452 vehicles were registered compared to 2018.

Despite the increase, the automotive analytics company noted things aren’t as rosy as they seem. In particular, they said the “positive results can be largely explained by purchases made in December to get ahead of the new EU emissions regulations that took effect at the beginning of 2020.” This last minute push helped to reverse a negative trend as sales were actually down 0.4% from January to November.

The biggest markets last year where Germany, the United Kingdom and France. They were followed by Italy and Spain.

Also Read: New Car Sales In Europe Went Down 7 Percent In January

Breaking down things a bit further, 1.28 million electrified vehicles were registered in 2019. 28% of them were battery electric vehicles and this represents 356,300 units as well as 2.3% of the total passenger car registrations in Europe.

The latter is a new record for electric vehicles and JATO Dynamics largely credits this to the Tesla Model 3. As they noted, the Tesla’s entry-level electric vehicle “achieved enormous levels of success during its first year in the market and became the top-selling pure electric car.” Europeans snapped up over 95,000 units and this made the Model 3 the 51st most popular vehicle on the continent.

JATO Dynamics global analyst Felipe Munoz said “There is no doubt that the Model 3 disrupted the European market by becoming the top-selling electric car and outselling other key premium models.” However, he noted the Model 3 is a sedan and that’s “not necessarily the body-type that consumers are looking for.”

So if customers aren’t looking for sedans, what do they want? Crossovers and SUVs, obviously. Last year, they accounted for 38.3% of the European market which was a new record and an increase of approximately 3% from last year.

Unsurprisingly, the gains came at the expense of city, subcompact, compact, midsize and executive cars. The only other vehicle type to gain market share was vans which were up 0.4%.

While crossovers and SUVs are growing in popularity, the four most popular vehicles in Europe last year were all cars. They include the Volkswagen Golf (410,330 units), Renault Clio (319,136 units), Volkswagen Polo (256,259 units) and Ford Fiesta (228,183 units). The most popular crossover was the Volkswagen Tiguan which garnered 224,890 sales.