According to a report from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), the financial case for battery cars has tipped into positive territory across much of Europe. At the heart of the transition sit lower battery prices. As the oil market is increasingly pressurized, the cost gap with combustion engines is projected to widen further.
The idea that electric cars remain a niche, available only as a company perk or to wealthier citizens, is gradually changing. The real purchase price of battery-electric vehicles has fallen considerably over the past five years, while today’s EVs offer greater range and better performance. Over the same stretch, combustion-engine cars became slightly more expensive.
The findings come from the ICCT’s annual EV Transition Check, and they suggest the market has crossed an important threshold.
The battery dividend
The single biggest driver behind this shift is the collapse in battery costs. Globally, the price of the cells that make up an EV pack has dropped by about 35 percent in real terms over the past five years.
That decline is finally filtering through to the sticker price, even if it is doing so slowly. Peter Mock, who leads ICCT’s European work, notes that carmakers have not passed the full savings on to buyers yet. In the coming years, there’s still room for further price cuts.
The effect is visible in the showroom. The number of available battery models has quadrupled, while the choice of combustion vehicles is shrinking. Across the EU, there are now about 35 battery models priced below €30,000, up from almost none a few years ago.
In the medium, upper-medium, and luxury segments, EVs have already reached upfront price parity with their gasoline equivalents. The lower end of the market is still a different story, but the gap is narrowing.
The fuel gap
Where the comparison really starts to disadvantage combustion engines is at the pump. The ICCT estimates that driving a battery car in 2025 costs 33 percent less in energy than running an equivalent gasoline vehicle, even for owners who split their charging between a less-costly home installation and more-expensive public charging points.
Relying entirely on public infrastructure still leaves the EV ahead by about 5 percent. Given the current oil-price environment, where the Iran war is strangling the market, that advantage will only have grown since the data were collected.
PHEV is the big loser
The study also quantifies the energy savings. As a whole, the EU is already avoiding roughly €4.5 billion per year in fossil-fuel imports simply because of the battery cars already on the road.
If there is a loser in the ICCT report, it is the plug-in hybrid. The study finds that real-world CO2 emissions from PHEVs are 4.6 times higher than their official type-approval values, and the gap is widening despite longer electric ranges.
The implication is that many plug-in hybrids burn gasoline for most of their mileage, making them a far less effective bridging technology than policymakers and the car industry once assumed.
Belgium at 36 percent
Europe’s manufacturing base is shifting to match. In 2025, battery cars made up 19 percent of EU passenger-car production, up from 5 percent in 2020. The share of combustion vehicles in European factories has dropped from 91 percent to 72 percent in the same period.
The public charging network has grown almost eightfold since 2020, reaching 1.16 million units by June 2026, and 92 percent of the major highway network is now within reach of a 150 kW or faster DC charger. Still, 55 percent of all public chargers are crammed into just three countries: the Netherlands, Germany, and France.
Battery cars captured 22 percent of new passenger-car registrations in the EU during the first half of 2026, with Belgium at 36 percent, second only to Denmark at 80 percent. France sits at 28 percent, and Germany lands at 26 percent.
