Credit: Canva Battery-electric sales in the EU reached 1.64 million in the first eight months of 2026, up 45%, with 16 models under EUR 25,000 due on sale by the end of the year. Transport and Environment says the version of the 2035 target proposed by Parliament’s rapporteur would cut sales of those cheap models by nearly three quarters by 2030. Cheap electric cars are selling in Europe because the rules required them. Battery-electric sales in the EU reached 1.64 million in the first eight months of the year, up 45%.
The version of the 2035 target now in front of Parliament would cut sales of the cheapest models by about three quarters by 2030. That last figure is Transport and Environment’s own modelling, in a report published today. The advocacy group counts 16 models under EUR 25,000 on sale by the end of 2026, twice last year’s number. Sales of those cars are on course to reach seven times their 2024 level.
More than 150 mass-market electric models are now available in the EU. About 60 arrive this year, against an average of 15 a year between 2021 and 2025. The sales numbers themselves are not new. We reported the 1,641,333 registrations and the 21.7% share in September, when battery-electric drew level with petrol for the year.
Transport and Environment puts the eight-month share at 22%, and August alone at 28%. France reached 38% in August and Germany 32%. The argument is about what comes next. Massimiliano Salini, the Forza Italia member who is Parliament’s rapporteur, wants the 2035 target set at a 90% cut rather than an end to combustion, which is also the Commission’s position.
His report would treat cars running only on renewable fuels as equivalent to electric ones. It would also stretch the compliance period from three years to five. Transport and Environment models the Salini version at 22% battery-electric in 2030, unchanged from today, and 39% in 2035, against 47% and 85% under the Commission’s. On those numbers European carmakers sell about 5.7 million battery cars in 2035 and Chinese carmakers sell 11.9 million.
European manufacturers supply nearly 60% of the models on sale today, having added 16 in the first half. Chinese brands hold 21% and added 11. The compliance record so far does not support the case for relief. Carmakers have closed three quarters of the gap to the 2025 to 2027 targets halfway through the period, and the group expects all of them to comply.
BMW, Stellantis, Kia and the Mercedes-Volvo pool are already there. Volkswagen has about 7 grams of CO2 per kilometre left to find. Britain, outside all of this, took 29.8% in August under the mandate it kept, against 28% across the EU.
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