Car market: Austria approaching 35 percent electric vehicle share
In Austria, 8,434 new electric cars hit the roads in October. This is slightly fewer than in September, but the share of electric vehicles among total registrations continues to rise, now reaching 34.9 percent. Gas hybrid vehicles remain the most popular, but their lead is shrinking.
The 8,434 new electric vehicles (BEVs) registered in October represent a 63 percent increase in Austria compared to the previous month, pushing the share of electric cars in total registrations to 34.9 percent. For comparison, the annual average so far showed that 27 percent of all new registrations in this Alpine country were electric vehicles. The growing importance of BEVs is driven by their high growth rates combined with a sluggish overall market. Austria saw a slight decline in October with 24,174 passenger cars registered, marking the first drop on an annual basis (-1.2 percent). However, looking at the first ten months of the year, the overall market still shows a growth of just over 11 percent.
In Austria, last month, only gasoline hybrids were more popular than electric vehicles, with 8,995 units accounting for 37.2% of the market share. However, demand for them is stagnating (+2.9% year-on-year), while electric vehicles, as mentioned earlier, are on a strong upward trend and are likely to surpass gasoline hybrids if this momentum continues. All other types of vehicles continue to lose market share. For example, Austria had 4,044 gasoline-powered cars in October (−37.7% year-on-year), 1,896 diesel-powered cars (−29.8% year-on-year), and 805 diesel-hybrid cars (−41.6% year-on-year). As usual, the report from Statistik Austria does not specify how the hybrid figures are distributed among mild hybrids, full hybrids, and plug-in hybrids. Certain hybrid variants are actually more similar to conventional internal combustion engines than to electric vehicles, a factor that should be taken into account when interpreting these numbers.
In summary, in all cases it can be stated that the Austrian new car market is primarily divided into gasoline hybrids, gasoline engines, and electric vehicles. Diesel and diesel hybrids are losing importance increasingly. Fundamentally, the October statistics are notable in that the overall market recorded declining figures on a monthly basis for the first time since July 2025.
Manuela Lenk, the director general for statistical affairs at Statistik Austria, commented on the developments as follows: “Since the start of 2026, 10.7% more new passenger cars have been registered in Austria than in the first 10 months of the previous year, two thirds of which had alternative propulsion systems. In October as well, new registrations of electric cars rose sharply by 63.3% compared to the same period last year. Overall, however, 1.2% fewer new passenger cars were registered than in October 2025. This marked the first slight decline in Austria’s new car market this year, attributable to falling registrations of gasoline and diesel hybrid vehicles.”
From January to October, Statistik Austria recorded 71,606 new electric cars — 39.5 percent more than in the corresponding period of the previous year. The institute has also updated its brand rankings for 2026: Among fully electric passenger cars, BMW remains slightly ahead with a 10.2 percent share, followed by Skoda (9.5 percent), BYD (9.2 percent), Tesla (8.5 percent), and VW (8.2 percent). The statistics once again show that there is currently no clear leader in Austria, with five brands closely tied in performance. Together, they account for just under half of the market.