CleanTechnica has been publishing a lot of articles about plugin vehicle market share in different countries. Under a couple of recent ones, some commenters asked for a graph comparing plugin vehicle market share growth in Norway from 2% onward with plugin vehicle market share growth in countries that more recently crossed the 2% marker.

One key thing they noticed, without seeing such a graph, is that plugin vehicle market share is growing quicker in the countries that more recently crossed 2% market share. (Note that Norway passed 2% market share between 2011 and 2012, whereas the next country to do that — the Netherlands — did it ~6 years later.)

I created that graph this weekend to see a visualization of this topic and what the trend looks like, and to share it with all of you. Following that graph (directly below), I’m including a graph and 7 charts showing plugin vehicle market share in these 7 top countries using the actual calendar years 2012–2020.

All of these charts and graphs are interactive, which unfortunately makes them show poorly on some devices (phones), so I’m also including static versions of the graphs on the bottom of the article.

The overall message here is that plugin vehicle market share growth is faster now than it was in the lonely Norwegian-only era (2011–2016). Naturally, part of that is that the tech has improved a great deal, but a bulk of the improvement in plugin vehicle share comes from the European Union requiring it. Automakers delayed building and selling plugin vehicles until they had to. Then, when they were forced to, they sold a lot — especially in these 7 top countries (Norway, Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland, UK, and Sweden).

Looking at plugin vehicle growth by calendar year in these 7 European countries, the four things that visually jump out to me most are: 1) Norway’s position well above the others, 2) the spike across markets from 2019 to 2020 (when EU fines started to kick in for automakers not selling efficient enough cars), 3) Sweden’s hockey-stick growth in that period, and 4) the Netherlands’ solid finish in third place (and second place for BEVs, if we were looking at that).

We could look at something like this for pure electric vehicles, but the percentages aren’t that high yet outside of Norway (54.3% in 2020), the Netherlands (21% in 2020), and perhaps Sweden (9.6% in 2020) and Switzerland (8.2% in 2020).

The last set of charts before the static versions of the graphs above lets you see the market share growth of plugin vehicles in the 7 focus countries in bar chart form — just toggle between countries using the dropdown bar in the top left.

Do you have any remaining thoughts on these graphs and charts? Any other special requests?