Economy 10 May 2024, 3:50pm

Hungarian electric vehicle market revs up in April

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The number of cars registered with green licence plates in Hungary has surpassed 96,000 by the end of April 2024, while the number of fully electric vehicles on the roads exceeded 55,000, the Ministry of Energy said.

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Monthly data

Turning green

In April 2024, a total of 2,539 vehicles were registered with green licence plates in Hungary, 13% fewer than in March but 57.4% more than in the same month of 2023.

This is how the monthly green plate registrations have turned out since January 2020 in the three main categories: Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV), Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV).

All electric

March saw the registration of 2,108 battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in Hungary, an all time high. The 1,687 green licence plates registered in April is the third highest, just under February's 1,704.

Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs)

HEVs are the second most popular type among electric vehicles in Hungary, but with far fewer of them getting registered than of BEVs. February was the best month both this year and as far as we have data (January 2020), with 744 HEVs getting green licence plates, followed by a decline (708) and some recovery (724) in April.

Plug-in electric vehicles (PHEVs)

Registrations in this category are erratic and the trend is slightly ascending. A total of 104 PHEVs got green number plates in April, up slightly from 90 in March, but fewer than in February (128) or January (134), not to mention higher figures in practically all but a couple of months since 2020.

The Energy Ministry said the upturn in the registration of vehicles with green licence plates owes to the e-vehicle subsidy programme recently announced with a HUF 30 billion budget.

Domestic companies can receive a state contribution of up to HUF 4 million per vehicle for the purchase of a pure electric car or commercial vehicle. They have applied for more than HUF 13 billion in grants under the scheme for the purchase of over 3,400 vehicles, it added.

How many green licence plates we have?

The answer to that question is: almost 100,000. Or 96,282 to be exact. The end-April figure marks a 2.7% month-on-month growth and a year-on-year increase of 35.5%. The number of green plates grew 5.5-fold since January 2020.

The geographical distribution shows that while at the beginning almost the same share of green licence plates were registered in Budapest (48.9%) than in the rest of the country (51.1%), the ratio has become much healthier by now, with 61% registered in the countryside and 39% in the capital.

As for the specific categories, the number of environmentally friendly motorcycles grew from 66 in January 2020 to 547 by end-April. Of BEVs, including passenger cars, trucks, buses, and tractors, there were 55,256 registered in Hungary, a 40.3% annual growth and more than seven times as many as in January 2020.

The number of HEVs totalled 28,285, up 36.4% yr/yr, while the number of PHEVs went up 15% to over 12,000. Although the figures shown in graph below represent a wider range of vehicles (as the note in the chart says), passenger cars comprised virtually 100% of HEVs and PHEVs and 93% of BEVs in April.

A note about the discrepancies between statistical data

You may find that there is a great discrepancy between the electric vehicle statistics of the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA) and of Hungary's Ministry of Energy, particularly if you try to compare figures for passenger cars.

For example, the ACEA reported 1,174 newly registered battery electric vehicles (BEVs) for Hungary in March 2024, while the Energy Ministry reported 2,108, i.e. 934 more - that's a major difference.

The ACEA unites Europe’s 15 major car, truck, van and bus makers. Due to regular changes in the registration files by the official licensing authorities, ACEA registration data also changes regularly for the current and the previous year’s data. Altogether it's a 'shallower pool' of data than the Hungarian database.

Hungary's Energy Ministry uses the database of the Ministry of the Interior, which includes all vehicles registered with green number plates, including motorcycles, passenger cars, trucks, tractors, and other zero-emission vehicles.

The composition is only one of the factors behind the different statistics, though. The other one - and we will try to delve deeper into this later on - is that the ACEA publishes statistics only on newly registered vehicles that are NEW, while Hungarian authorities include also imported, i.e. second-hand electric vehicles in the statistics. Once we find out how many vehicles in the green number plate statistics are imported, we'll let you know.

The question of second-hand electric vehicles is important not only with regard to a (difficult) comparison with ACEA data, but also regarding data by the Central Statistical Office (KSH). The latter might be of greater help and allow us to draw some tentative conclusions.

According to end-2023 KSH figures, there were 41,212 electric passenger cars in Hungary. The ministry's figures show 45,342 green licence plates for BEVs. Assuming that these cover new passenger cars, our cautious conclusion is that 4,130 BEVs were imported, i.e. 9.1% of the purely electric passenger cars registered in Hungary with green plates last year. The same comparison gives us a 8.4% share for end-2022 and about 10% for end-2021.