Battery-electric cars outsold gas and diesel cars combined in the European Union in August. EU buyers registered 196,486 electric cars that month, up 62.7% from a year earlier, against 133,816 gas cars and 45,403 diesels, 179,219 together. Diesel’s share of the EU market fell to 6.4%.

“I think this is the end of diesel,” Erik Severinson, chief commercial officer of Volvo Cars, told the Financial Times. Volkswagen chief executive Oliver Blume called the EV surge Europe’s breakthrough.

Stellantis, Europe’s second-largest carmaker, put diesel back into at least seven European car and van models this year. Its chief executive now says diesel has very few uses left.

Diesel Lost a Quarter of Its EU Sales in August

EU diesel car registrations fell 23.8% in August to 45,403, from 59,547 a year earlier, according to the monthly table in ACEA’s September 24 release. That cut diesel’s share of the market to 6.4% from 8.8%. Gas cars fell 24.6% in the same month.

Germany accounts for about half of what is left. German buyers registered 22,516 new diesel cars in August, down 17.3%, while France sold only 1,816, down 57.7%. Plug-in hybrids, which first outsold diesel across Europe over the first ten months of 2025, outsold it 78,426 to 45,403 in August. Over the first eight months of this year, diesel held 7.3% of EU registrations, down from 9.4%.

Battery-electric cars took 27.7% of the August market, against 21.7% for the year to date, and the total EU market grew 4.5% to 708,211 cars. Full and mild hybrids remained the largest group, at 234,980 registrations.

Diesel Prices Doubled Within Seven Months of the Iran War

Wholesale diesel hit $220 a barrel in Europe and the U.S. in September, more than twice its price before the Iran war began in February, the Financial Times reported. Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries have tightened supply further, on top of the diesel exports lost from the Middle East.

The International Energy Agency’s October Oil Market Report, published October 14, found diesel supply falling short of demand in the fourth quarter. It does not expect the inventories lost in the crisis to be rebuilt before the second half of 2027.

Diesel still powers 40% of the cars on Europe’s roads, according to the environmental group Transport & Environment. Its analysis puts the extra cost of filling a 50-liter (13-gallon) diesel tank at €30, a rise of more than 40% since January.

In the U.S., the national average for on-highway diesel was $6.18 a gallon in the week of October 12, $2.51 more than a year earlier, according to the Energy Information Administration. This month President Trump threatened to ban U.S. diesel exports, then backed away from the idea. Diesel cars barely register in the U.S., but the trucks, vans and pickups that run on it do. Ember estimates that EV fleets in oil-importing countries displaced $20 billion worth of crude in the six months after the Strait of Hormuz closed.

Stellantis Brought Diesel Back in February and Now Sees Few Uses

Stellantis revived diesel versions of the Peugeot 308, DS 4, Opel Astra, Opel Combo, Peugeot Rifter and Citroën Berlingo, among others, Electrive reported in February. Electrive cited weak EV sales, and the revival came after the EU’s December move to soften its 2035 ban on new gas and diesel cars.

Eight months later, Stellantis chief executive Antonio Filosa said the company will keep using diesel engines for a while longer. He also said there are “very few applications” for diesel outside trucks and commercial vehicles, and at the Paris Motor Show he described a strong acceleration of EVs in the market.

Renault, which was already phasing out diesel cars, expects small vans and commercial vehicles to go next as fast charging improves and cheaper electric models arrive. Chief executive François Provost framed it as a fleet manager’s problem. “You just can’t control your diesel budget,” he said of companies running diesel vans.

Volvo’s Severinson pointed to the same uncertainty from the buyer’s side: higher fuel prices and no clear idea what a used diesel will be worth.

EVXL’s Take

The executives are writing diesel’s obituary, but their own trade group’s table shows gas cars falling slightly faster than diesels in August. My read is that buyers are walking away from the pump itself, because the war has shown them what an unreliable fuel supply does to the cost of owning a car.

Stellantis treated slow EV demand as a regulation problem, and the fuel market answered it in eight months. When I wrote up ACEA’s August numbers on October 6, the U.S. was stuck near 6% new EV share with gas averaging $4.33 in September. U.S. diesel now costs $6.18 a gallon, and an American company running diesel vans has the same budget problem Provost described in Paris. Those fleets are the U.S. buyers I’d watch, because they see the price of fuel in a spreadsheet every month.

Sources: Financial Times, ACEA, International Energy Agency, U.S. Energy Information Administration

EVXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.