Not Even Half of EVs in the Netherlands Are Privately Owned
In the Netherlands, there are as many as one million cars with a plug. Of course, not all of them are electric cars. Of those over one million plug-in cars, almost 600,000 were fully electric. This and more is evident from figures from CBS (Statistics Netherlands).
CBS has inventoried the Dutch car fleet. At the end of the first quarter – on April 1st – of this year, the Dutch car fleet consisted of just over one million cars with a plug. Of these, 410,000 are plug-in hybrids. The remaining 594,000 have a fully electric drivetrain. Also interesting: until recently, there were for the first time more private owners of a plug-in car (plug-in and EV) than business owners.
The speed at which things are moving becomes clear when we look at the historical figures. For example, on January 1st, there were 569,000 electric cars in our country. This means that 25,000 EVs have been added in just four months. At the beginning of this year, there were 375,000 plug-ins, 35,000 fewer than four months later. On January 1, 2019, the Dutch passenger car fleet counted only 45,000 EVs and 94,000 plug-ins. In 2021, there were 174,000 electric cars in the Netherlands and 99,000 plug-in hybrids. At the beginning of 2023, there were 330,000 fully electric cars and 187,000 plug-in hybrids in our country.
Almost 94 Percent Are Not EVs
EVs are being added rapidly, but because the total car fleet is also growing, the share does not necessarily increase very rapidly. The total car fleet counted 9.3 million cars on April 1, 2025. Of these, 6.4 percent are EVs. This also means that 93.6 percent of the car fleet simply had an electrified or non-electrified drivetrain with an internal combustion engine. At the beginning of this year, about 75 percent of all cars had a traditional gasoline engine. That share decreased by 1.3 percent compared to a year earlier. The number of non-plug-in hybrids increased by 23.9 percent in one year. The number of diesels, not surprisingly, decreased further, by 12.3 percent compared to 2024.
Private vs Business
Of the 569,000 EVs that the Netherlands counted on January 1st this year, 245,000 were privately owned. 43 percent. Of the 375,000 plug-ins that the Netherlands counted at that time, 45.3 percent were privately owned. That is remarkably close to each other.