Europe's electric car sales jump 49% as global EV sales grow | Hacker News Reader

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

electrek.co

85 pointscisc93 comments

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.

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.

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

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

Is Britain more relaxed than the EU around imports?

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

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.

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

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.

This highlight the core issue of vision-only self driving: it falls apart when visibility is bad or confusing. Tesla FSD struggles with something as common as driving towards the sun at dawn/sunset.

Limit FSD to southbound roads, problem solved!

Probably northbound only. Sun at noon is low enough in northern Europe that it's not much different from sunset/dawn

Edge cases.

LIDAR wouldn't help in case of water/rain, quite the opposite. It does help for funny painting.

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.

European car 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?

There is no Tesla Full self driving in europe.

BMW can self drive on autobahns in europe.

Can one buy a Mercedes or BMW today in Finland that can drive hands-off? Not meant as a rhetorical question. I thought that it's not possible but I might be wrong, am not an expert.

Tesla can be used in Finland supervised aka tesla needs to see that you look at the street. BMW and Mercedes can drive hands-off and eyes off on german autobahns.

So none of them can do it properly anywhere :D

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.

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

Basically the smallest EU countries.

I agree that Chinese EV cars are all over Europe.

> 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?

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.

>The main issue is the tariffs and certification - like there is a literal hard cap on the total number of imports.

Tesla benefited <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-19/tesla-vol...> from Canada cutting import duty on Chinese EVs, by grabbing most of the slots.

> Meanwhile Chinese EVs are banned

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

> Meanwhile Chinese EVs are banned

What? BYD, NIO and others are to be found everywhere in Germany. I literally see one parked on the other side of the street looking out of my window right now.

Looking at your comments, which each and every one of is anti-EU and somewhat similar, I am almost convinced you are, in fact, a bot. And if you're not, then you have a clear agenda and given this very comment, just spread lies.

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

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?

Hybrid cars getting any benefits is dumb, I agree. But I would argue that automotive and just transportation in general are strategic sectors basically anywhere.

I think it’s debatable, trucks and vans are important for logistics but the tariff doesn’t even apply to them. The whole thing is just to protect car industry profits.

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

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

It's not even the first time for cars!

What about the metric system, healthcare and food quality.

US has been protectionist forever. Even in the very low (good!) tariff rates under the WTO, ownership rules and safety (plus "safety") regulations acted as protection systems. Now, the US is afar from being the only country to have done this, but in the US they have chosen another layer that most successful countries have abandoned: national champions and cartel.

The EU, for all its faults, is a far more competetive environment than the US and has been for decades. Air travel, telecoms, and banking are far more competetive than the US. The US favors cartel systems so that there are a small number of airlines, telecom providers, foor companies, etc. Strict competition rules make things like credit cards much cheaper (no "points" etc because there's no money to fund them). So all those products are much cheaper in the EU than in the US and more dynamic too.

These higher prices make the GDP look bigger and the stock market too: in the EU that extorted money is returned as a consumer surplus.

European brands, especially French, are currently absolutely cooking with the new EV models. The boom started with Renault 5 and it took off from there.

So I personally am absolutely not afraid of the European brands disappearing somehow because China makes them quite well and affordably now, too. This previously already happened with Japanese and Korean ones as well and, to be honest, European brands just keep delivering exciting new cars that get your heart pumping and they still do. Meanwhile it hardly ever happens with the Asian ones. It does, but it's still... not the same kind excitement.

Although the article only mentions BYD, Tesla is gaining share in Europe despite Chinese EVs. <https://www.kansas.com/news/business/article317450876.html>

Tesla market share collapsed in 2025. It's had a bit of a dead cat bounce in 2026, but it's still nowhere close to what it was in 2024.

The Model Y still sells relatively well when compared to individual models, but every other manufacturer has a lot more than 2 models for sale. The VW sister companies have roughly 18 models that compete with the Y. The Y will outsell any of the 18, but if you add the 18 together, it does not.

P.S. Your link is broken.

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.

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

There are so many mistakes in your comment that I can only conclude that you don't even want to understand.

I live in North America (Canada) and I own a "EV charging station". Most of time I just call it "the electric outlet in the garage".

Also, if you measure the active time, the "charge time" is ridiculously small: 15 seconds to plug, 15 seconds to unplug (and go do something else between those times). Beat that gas stations.

The average american drives like 30 miles a day, even city oriented EVs give you 250+ miles these days. If you periodically need more just rent a car, you'll still save money in the long run

Are Europe and China not big places? I think if you look at the data of how most people actually use their cars, most of those who have an outlet at home would never need to visit a gas/charging station again except for those rare times when they actually go on long distance trips. Average daily commute is supposed to be around 25 miles (both ways)

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?

How are they going to tow their boats?

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

My EV can easily tow a boat

I was referring to the flying EV. You have a flying EV?

I thought the Cybertruck was a boat?

Is there a flying CyberFuck?

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.

AIUI, there are quite few electric cars available in the US compared to everywhere else; if you don't fancy a Tesla, or a restricted part of VW's or Hyundai's range, you don't have many options there.

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

Tesla benefited <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-19/tesla-vol...> from Canada cutting import duty on Chinese EVs, by grabbing most of the slots.

Anecdotal, but I think there are a few hurdles to overcome in the US.

- The infrastructure isn't there yet. I can get gas anywhere, but charging stations may be few and far between. The median salary in my area is mid $100k, and 50k pop. and I see Teslas and EV'S everywhere. But despite that the town has only 1 public charging station.

- For apartment dwellers, who don't have the option of charging at home or work, why bother putting up with the anxiety of trying to find a charger?

- The early adopters feel like they got burned. Lessees like low maintenance, and the batteries tend to deterioriate. Buyers get into the same situation, but have no equity, and it's hard to justify dropping $$$ for a new battery when they can put that into a new car.

- There's a lot of nothing in between major towns and cities. If it's super cold out, will you make it the 120mi/193km to your destination?

This is just FUD.

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?

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

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

Interesting how _seasonal_ this seems to be; there's a falloff in EV sales at the beginning of each year as a proportion of total sales, and then it rises. Maybe company fleet purchase timing?

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