China First to Close the EV Price Gap

China is championing battery electric vehicle sales, having accounted for 57 percent of global BEV registrations in the first quarter of 2025. This successful level of adoption is largely due to the affordability of its cars. According to data from the market research and data analysis company JATO, passenger cars with combustion engines cost an average of €22,500 in China in 2024, while purely electric cars (BEVs) cost €21,900. This means that unlike in Germany and the United States, two other major car manufacturing nations, electric vehicles in China are often more affordable than cars with combustion engines.

In Germany, the list price of an electric car is on average 34 percent higher than that of a combustion engine car, with the prices of both categories having increased compared to 2019. In the US, too, electric cars are significantly more expensive than combustion engine cars. However, the price gap between the two types of drive systems has narrowed by 13 percentage points.