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Where every new car is going electric

Where every new car is going electric

Welcome to Mapped — one dataset turned into one map, every week. This week: what share of the new cars a country buys are electric.

“The world is switching to electric cars” is one of those statements that’s true globally and almost meaningless locally. Zoom in and the switch isn’t happening everywhere at once — it’s happening in a handful of countries, dramatically, while most of the world has barely started. Here’s the share of 2024’s new cars that plugged in (fully electric plus plug-in hybrid), country by country.

Electric share of new car sales by country, 2024

What you’re looking at

Norway is a different planet. Around nine in every ten new cars sold there in 2024 plugged in — 88% of them fully battery-electric, with a sliver of plug-in hybrids on top. A decade of tax breaks and toll exemptions turned the exception into the default; Norway is now closing in on its goal of zero new petrol and diesel cars.

Behind it, a tight Nordic-and-neighbours cluster runs dark green: Sweden, Denmark and Finland all sit near or above half, with the Netherlands and Belgium close behind. Then comes the surprise near the top — China, where roughly one in two new cars was electric in 2024. The world’s largest car market is also, quietly, one of its most electrified.

Now the pale half of the map. The United States sits at just over 10% — one electric car for every nine petrol ones, far behind Europe’s leaders despite building some of the biggest EV brands. Big economies like Germany (20%), France (25%) and the UK (~30%) are mid-table, not leading. And across most of the world the map is nearly white: Japan is around 4%, India about 2–3% — the switch has barely begun.

The takeaway

There isn’t one global EV transition — there are a few national ones sprinting ahead of a world that’s still mostly filling up at the pump. Norway shows how fast it can go. The pale spots show how far most of the map still has to travel.

Make this map yourself

The whole map is one maproll URL — no GIS software, no shapefiles:

https://api.maproll.io/map.svg?scope=world
  &data=NO:90,SE:58,DK:56,CN:48,DE:20,US:10,JP:4,IN:2.5...
  &theme=light&legendTitle=%25%20electric

Swap in your own numbers, change the palette, and embed it anywhere an image tag works. Build one in 60 seconds →

Source: electric car sales share (battery-electric + plug-in hybrid, % of new car sales), 2024, from the IEA Global EV Outlook 2025. Figures for smaller European markets cross-checked against ICCT and ACEA/EAFO national registration data for full-year 2024. Next week on Mapped: subscribe below to get it first.