EU car sales seen returning to growth in 2022, but charging infrastructure concerns persist

Passenger car registrations in the EU are forecast to grow 7.9% in 2022 to 10.5 million units, with chip supplies expected to stabilize, the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA) said Feb 8.

However, the recovery would still be almost 20% below pre-crisis sales levels in 2019, with concerns over charging infrastructure persisting.

Against last year's backdrop of a contracting vehicle market hampered by supply chain issues, electrically-chargeable cars are slowly continuing to gain overall market share, now accounting for almost one in every five new cars sold across the EU.

"The strong performance of electrically-chargeable cars is very welcome news," ACEA president and CEO of BMW Group Oliver Zipse said. "However, we cannot forget that this is still quite a fragile market, which is highly reliant on support measures such as purchase incentives and, above all, the widespread availability of charging infrastructure."

According to the statement, the pace of infrastructure roll-out is lagging behind consumer demand for electrically-chargeable cars; over the past five years, sales of electric cars have been growing four times faster than the build-up of charging points.

According to the ACEA, electric car sales increased more than ten-fold between 2017 and 2021, whereas the number of public chargers in the EU grew by less than 2.5 times over the same period.

ACEA is therefore calling the Parliament and Council to ensure that Europe builds a sufficiently dense network of charging and refueling infrastructure. The European Parliament and national governments are in discussion on the proposed Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation.