The share of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) has increased for fleets in five of the top European markets over the last few years, and share reached a new record increase in January 2021 by jumping 12%, Dataforce said.

January 2021 also found that approximately 17% of all the true fleet registrations in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, and Germany were derived from vehicles with PHEV powertrains, Dataforce said. This is almost three times as high as seen in the private sector with the current support and appealing taxation for company car drivers helping contribute to this. Each of these five European markets show increases in the share of this fuel type but the German market has shown the most significant increased level of interest.

The performance of German manufacturers in their home market has dominated the market, as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, and Volkswagen represent a share of almost 70% of all PHEVs registrations from the fleet market.

In 2021 there will be a huge bunch of new fully electric cars entering the European market and in addition the product range of PHEVs will continue to expand significantly. 

Dataforce also reporte a downturn in diesel powertrains in these five markets for the last few years, which is continuing into 2021. The diesel share is lower than ever before and declined in all five countries. Italy is slightly departing from this norm with a stable diesel share of 59.9% which is by far the highest of these five markets, Dataforce said.

From 2015 to today, the share of diesel in the EU-5 fleet market decreased by 30% overall (from 72.5% to 42.0%). This decline was particularly strong in Spain and the U.K. where diesel share has more than halved during this period. In some vehicle segments diesel powertrains are already in the minority or have completely disappeared, Dataforce said. Elsewhere, the downward trend is also visible from the high-volume segments, where this fuel type is massively losing ground, dropping to a share of only 40%.