Sweden: Europe’s most useful electric vehicle test case

By: Patrick Plötz

About ten years ago I listened to a panel discussion at Lindholmen Science Park in Gothenburg. At some point someone said, more or less: ”We are such a small country. What difference can we really make?” What struck me was not so much the remark itself but how normal it seemed to everyone in the room. It has stayed with me ever since.

I am a German researcher who has studied electric vehicle markets for some fifteen years, and an adjunct professor at Chalmers. I see Sweden from slightly outside, but not from far away. From there, the question looks wrong to me. Sweden’s weight in Europe’s electric vehicle transition does not depend on its size. It depends on what the rest of Europe can learn from it, and in this aspect, Sweden may matter more than Norway.

Norway has shown that a car market can go almost fully electric: in 2025, 96 percent of all new cars were battery electric. But it did so under conditions few countries share. A national wealth fund made generous tax exemptions affordable, very high car taxes turned these exemptions into a strong lever, and there was no domestic car industry whose jobs were at stake. Sweden’s conditions are much closer to those of Germany, France or Italy: strict fiscal rules, major car and truck manufacturers, and a market shaped by company cars and plug-in hybrids. This makes Sweden the more useful test case for the rest of Europe.

What a normal country shows

Sweden has already shown what happens when broad purchase subsidies end. After the climate bonus was abolished in November 2022, the market did not collapse, but it stalled. The battery-electric share of new cars fell from 39 percent in 2023 to 35 percent in 2024 and rose only to 37 percent in 2025, while plug-in hybrids gained ground. Germany had the same experience a year later. Its premium ended overnight in December 2023, and the battery-electric share fell from 18 to 14 percent.

This year, both markets are picking up again. In Sweden, battery-electric cars reached 45 percent of new registrations in August and 49 percent in September. From January to September, the share was 43 percent, compared with 35 percent a year earlier. In Germany, more than one in three new cars in September was battery-electric, a new record.

Both countries have also returned to targeted support. Since March 2026, Sweden has paid low-income households in rural areas a monthly premium for up to three years, largely funded by the EU Social Climate Fund. Germany has offered an income-tested premium since January. How much of the recovery is due to this support, and how much to new and cheaper models, is to be understood. But the Swedish sequence of strong growth, a stall without subsidies and a recovery with a different policy mix is the evidence the rest of Europe needs. Norway cannot provide it.

Small circles, pragmatic decisions

My second observation is more personal. It rests on my own experience with Swedish colleagues and stakeholders, not on data, and Swedish readers will judge it better than I can. Much of it comes from heavy trucks, where Sweden, together with Norway and the Netherlands, is among Europe’s frontrunners.

The first thing that struck me is how small the circles are. In a project with a Swedish authority, we talked with one or two people about battery trucks. When I later met others at an event, it turned out that the handful of people who mattered all knew each other. I have had the same experience on other topics.

In Germany, these circles are roughly ten times larger, in my impression. Debates take much longer and are more complex, because many more people must be convinced and brought to a shared understanding. Small groups also form more quickly, each living in their own bubble and confirming their own views. In Sweden, this seems to me less likely.

Another observation is Swedish pragmatism. In our project HoLa on megawatt charging for long-haul trucks, the exchange with the Swedish truck manufacturers has been very open, engaged and constructive. I have also seen the contrast with Germany in many small moments. In German projects, I have often sat in meetings where everyone agreed that a certain rule made no sense, and still everyone insisted that rules are rules. In the same situation, I have heard Swedish colleagues say: ”But we all agree the rule is pointless. So, let’s do what makes sense.”

This matters for the transition. Electrifying transport requires manufacturers, grid operators, authorities and fleet operators to coordinate. Where the circles are small and people are willing to act on what they agree is sensible, that coordination is easier and faster.

How does Sweden matter?

Measured in new cars, Sweden is indeed a small part of the European market. If someone in Gothenburg or Stockholm asked me today what difference such a country can make, my answer would be this: A small country cannot move Europe’s market. But it can show Europe, earlier and more clearly than others, what works under normal conditions and what does not. Norway answered whether electric mobility can work. Sweden is answering whether it works for a normal country when money is limited, industry has interests, and policy changes direction.

That is not a small contribution.

Referenser

[1] omEV, Podd #87 Prof. Patrick Plötz, e-mobilitetsforskare länk