The Netherlands registered 33,061 new passenger cars in October 2026, 3.5% fewer than a year earlier, and 18,243 of them were fully electric. That is 55.2% of the market, the highest monthly share yet. In September, 52.8% had been the first month above half.
The figures come from RAI Vereniging and BOVAG, based on RDC registration data, as reported by Autoblog.
The month in figures
| October 2026 | Registrations | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Battery-electric | 18,243 | 55.2% |
| Hybrid (incl. mild hybrid) | 12,742 | 38.5% |
| Petrol | 1,829 | 5.5% |
| Diesel | 157 | 0.5% |
| LPG | 88 | 0.3% |
| All new passenger cars | 33,061 | −3.5% year on year |
Over ten months the Netherlands has registered 297,051 new cars, 2.3% fewer than in 2025, and 42.8% of them were electric.
Tesla went from second to outside the top twenty
In September Tesla was the second-biggest brand in the country, on 3,165 cars. In October it registered about 340.
The trade bodies' brand list stops at the top five, so that figure comes from the RDW's open vehicle register. TeslAnt counted new Teslas whose first Dutch registration fell in October: 281 Model Ys and 59 Model 3s. The same query gives 3,168 for September, three more than BOVAG's official count. For October 2025 it gives 646 Teslas, so Tesla's Dutch registrations roughly halved year on year, while the market as a whole fell 3.5%. On the same count, about 340 cars puts Tesla around 26th among brands.
Part of that is Tesla's usual quarterly rhythm, with deliveries bunched into each quarter's final month. But last October was nearly twice as strong. In Norway, by contrast, Tesla topped the October table.
The Model Y remains the best-selling car in the Netherlands this year. It led on 7,283 at the end of September, 1,015 ahead of the Toyota Aygo X, which did not make October's top five and so cannot have closed the gap.
Who sold instead
| Brand | October 2026 | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Kia | 3,087 | 9.3% |
| Volkswagen | 2,931 | 8.9% |
| Škoda | 2,261 | 6.8% |
| Renault | 2,171 | 6.6% |
| Toyota | 2,076 | 6.3% |
The best-selling car of any kind was the Škoda Elroq on 931, followed among electric models by the Kia EV2 (621), Volvo EX30 (615), Volkswagen ID.4 (593) and Renault 5 (561).
Chinese brands kept pushing. BYD registered 674 cars, 294 of them the Seal U, Leapmotor 622 and Jaecoo 374. Vietnam's VinFast, which had registered no cars in the Netherlands this year, put 465 VF 6s on Dutch plates in a single month.
What it means for buyers
At 55.2%, an electric car is now the default new car in the Netherlands, not the alternative. For Tesla, the test is December: whether the quarter's final month brings it back near the top of the table, as September did.