High earners buy nearly half of Dutch electric cars

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The Netherlands’ shift to electric cars is being driven overwhelmingly by its wealthiest households, while lower earners buy up the country’s oldest and most polluting vehicles, new figures from national statistics office CBS show.

Of the roughly 259,000 fully electric cars and plug-in hybrids bought or changed hands in 2025, the highest-earning 10% of households took almost 75,000 – more than a quarter of the total. Add the next bracket down and the top fifth of earners account for close to half of every plug-in car sold.

At the other end, the lowest-earning 10% bought around 6,000, about 2% of the total. What they did buy skewed old and diesel: two-thirds of the cars bought by the poorest fifth were more than 10 years old, and diesel’s share was highest among the lowest earners.

The split reflects what people can afford. Most cars that change hands in the Netherlands are second-hand – of 1.7 million bought or transferred in 2025, only 148,000 were new – and the used market remains overwhelmingly petrol, with nearly 1.4 million of the total running on it.

The figures come as the government prepares to step in. From the last quarter of 2026, a scheme aimed at lower and middle incomes will let households scrap an old petrol or diesel car and claim a subsidy towards a second-hand fully electric one. The cabinet has set aside €52 million over three years for the measures.

The scheme is a direct answer to a long-standing criticism – that state support for electric driving has mostly reached the wealthy – that these figures now bear out.